Energy conservation effect of new HVAC system for condominiums with solar collectors integrated with the balcony handrail

Energy consumption in Japan's houses has been increasing rapidly over the past decades. Furthermore, installation of 24-h ventilation systems in houses became mandatory last year, which will probably increase the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) energy consumption in Japan's houses. Regardless of these situations, natural energy utilization to reduce HVAC energy has not spread, especially in condominiums in Japan. In this study, we propose a new HVAC system for condominiums that makes use of solar heat, outdoor cool air by integrating elements in condominiums such as the balcony handrail, the 24-h ventilation system, and under-floor space. As a first step in the development of this system, we carried out experiments and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies on a solar heat collector integrated with the balcony handrail to determine its specification and to obtain information on its heat collection performance. As a second step, we calculated dynamic thermal load on a model condominium to evaluate the energy-saving performance and thermal comfort of the proposed system. The calculation results show that the proposed system has a high performance, both for energy saving and thermal comfort.