Assessment of Urban Heat Island Effect on Building Energy Consumption for Beijing Using Off-Line Urban Parameterizations

Abstract: The urban heat island (UHI) effect on building energy use for heating and cooling in Beijing is explored through a coupled Building Effect Parameterization-Building Energy Model(BEP-BEM), which is driven by observation data from two meteorological towers, with one located in the downtown and the other in the outskirt. The average UHI density in Beijing during summer is approximately 1.58°C based on the 2-m air temperature difference between two automobile weather stations nearest the two towers, and in winter, this value reaches 3.82°C. The simulation results for 2015 show that for a typical office building, the average energy use for cooling purposes in urban areas is 5.85 W/m²(per unit floor area) higher than that in rural areas during summer, while the average use of energy for heating purposes is 15.21 W/m² lower than the suburbs during winter. So does it for a residential building, however, the cooling energy use difference between urban and rural is smaller, about 3.05W/m². This offline model performs well for a whole year with the simulation of net radiation, 2-m air temperature, sensible and latent heat are all in good accordance with observations. Additionally, the average daily cycles of cooling energy use in July and heating energy use in January are validated against the US Department of Energy EnergyPlus, which is a good reference when simulating energy use for a single buildings.