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THE SCHOOL OF CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Under the provisions of the regulations for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
on Thursday, April 30, 2015
3:00 – 5:00 PM
in Arch (East) 217
will be held the
DISSERTATION PROPOSAL DEFENSE
for
Steven Jige Quan
"Urban Density and Energy Performance of Solar Buildings"
The Examiners Are:
Perry P. Yang, Associate Professor, SCaRP/SoA - Major Advisor
John Crittenden, Professor, CEE - Minor Advisor
Subhrajit Guhathakurta, Professor, SCaRP
Godfried L Augenbroe, Professor, SoA
Faculty and students are invited to attend this examination.
Abstract:
Urban density has been seen as an important factor in sustainable urban development. However, very few attentions have been paid to the influence of different densities on energy use in the building sector, while most of the studies focus on the transportation sector, despite the fact that the contributions to the total urban energy use from the two sectors are comparable. The building energy use is based on the thermal performance, which is highly related to the shapes of buildings. This requires the understanding of how urban density and built form jointly contribute to energy performance. At the same time, as the solar power integrated building becomes a prevailing approach in the decentralized renewable energy generation, building changes into a system with both energy use and production, and the methods of measure, analysis and design are increasingly important. But with previous findings of better building energy efficiency and less solar potentials in higher density, how density influences the overall building energy performance remains an unclear trade-off.
This study will try to answer this question by systematically examining the relationship between urban density, built form and overall building energy performance. Two research methods will be used: explorative and empirical research. In the explorative research, parametric experiments will be made to explore the relationship between density, built form and energy performance. In the empirical research, studies will be conducted at the site, block and neighborhood level using US and Asian cities as the study areas, which represent different climate zone conditions and regulatory contexts. Building energy performance will be simulated by EnergyPlus, Ecotect and a GIS-based building energy balance modeling system developed in this study, and the density-form-energy relationship will be examined by statistical methods. The findings of this study could help policy-makers, planners and urban designers to better understand how density influences solar-powered buildings in design and regulatory contexts for sustainable urban development. It could also inform building stakeholders with solar power production and solar panel angles and areas for their decisions to adopt the solar building technology.
