An investigation on energy consumption in residential building with different orientation: a BIM approach

The present work targets to provide a simplified energy analysis to assess the influence of the orientation of the buildings. The energy savings mostly depends on the solar heat gain and more often local factors including social lifestyle. A multi-storied, multifamily residential house in Afghanistan is considered as case study. The first step in this analysis is to develop a 3D model of the building. The second step is to study the energy scenarios for different orientations through simulations. Then the energy analysis is performed. In this study taking the whole building as a unit for energy analysis, 24 test scenarios are considered by changing the building orientation 15° rotation each time including the actual orientation. It is observed from the analysis of data collected that a saving of $1393 from the best orientation (+ 315° clockwise) to the worst orientation (+ 165° clockwise). The simulated electricity demand is validated by taking the original bills of the actual orientation and it is observed the values are 2.65% greater than the simulated values. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.