Assessing the natural ventilation cooling potential of residential buildings in the Hot Summer and Cold Winter zone of China

This paper presents an investigation of the Natural Ventilation Cooling Potential (NVCP) of residential buildings located in the Hot Summer Cold Winter (HSCW) climate zone of China by means of dynamic simulations. First, Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering (HAC) analysis is used for sub-zoning the HSCW zone according to different wind speeds. Then, representative cities in each zone are selected to run simulations in EnergyPlus and work out their NVCP under both single-sided and cross ventilation regimes. The outcomes show that natural ventilation can help achieve comfort conditions for more than 50% of time in the windiest city and for more than 40% of time in less windy areas