ROOF COVER IMPACT ON COOLING ENERGY USE OF OFFICE BUILDINGS

This paper analyzes the impact of roof covers on office building energy use for representative US climate zones. In particular, the study presented in the paper investigates the potential annual cooling energy use savings that roof covers could provide using whole-building simulation analysis to evaluate the performance of a 2-story office building in five US locations. Three parameters of the roof covers including their size, height, and transmittance, are considered in the analysis. The simulation results indicate that while roof covers had similar affects on buildings in all climate zones, their impact in reducing cooling energy usage is different and is more pronounced in cooler climates. Specifically, roof covers could potentially achieve cooling energy savings of up to: 25% in Houston, 33% in Atlanta, 31% in Nashville, 38% in Chicago, and 41% in Madison. Based on the detailed simulation analysis results, a simplified calculation model is developed to help the estimation of cooling energy savings as a function of the roof cover size, height, and transmittance.