Developing a modified typical meteorological year weather file for Hong Kong taking into account the urban heat island effect

Building energy computer simulation software is a useful tool for achieving sophisticated design and evaluation of the thermal performance of buildings. For successful thermal and energy simulation of buildings, it requires hourly weather data such as dry bulb air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, etc. Nowadays, an urban city faces a problem of an urban heat island which causes the urban area to have a higher air temperature than the rural region. Since the currently available weather dataset used in building simulation software mainly comes from weather stations located in remote and rural areas, the impact of the urban heat island on thermal and energy performance of buildings may not be effectively reflected. This paper reports an approach to construct a modified typical meteorological weather file, taking into account the urban heat island effect in the summer season. Field measurements have been carried out in the summer months and the corresponding urban heat island intensities were then determined. With a morphing algorithm, an existing typical meteorological year weather file was modified. An office building and a typical residential flat were modeled with a renowned building energy simulation program EnergyPlus. Computer simulations were conducted using the existing and modified typical meteorological year weather files. It was found that there was around a 10% increase in air-conditioning demand caused by the urban heat island effect in both cases. The implications of this and further work will also be discussed in this paper. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.