Performance of natural ventilation in office buildings: impact of climate, building properties and building use

Abstract The aim of this paper is to define the performance of natural ventilation from different levels, taking into account the climatic potential, the energy performance of the building and the use of the building in terms of thermal comfort of the occupants. To do this, Building Energy Simulation has been used to simulate simplified office buildings with different parameters to quantify their impact on the natural ventilation efficiency. These parameters include three levels of energy performance of the envelope, three different cooling modes with air conditioning only, natural ventilation only and a mixed mode between both, two weather files, and two scenarios of natural ventilation (possible all the day long or only during occupied period). Finally, various KPIs were calculated to show the diversity of ways of looking at natural ventilation performance, and the impacts of changes in the models’ input parameters on the three defined performance levels. For example, we have shown that a particular building can have good thermal comfort without having the best building potential, demonstrating the need for multiple levels of natural ventilation performance.