Investigation of Phase Change Materials on Australian Residential Building Energy Efficiency

This paper investigates the effectiveness of Phase Change Materials (PCMs) in building envelopes on the energy efficiency of Australian residential buildings. Using DesignBuilder simulation, a representative Australian single storey residential house was modelled with different PCM application strategies under a range of Australian climates. In this case study, PCMs could achieve 2.3–16.3% annual electricity savings depending on types of PCMs and climates except in Australian Climate Zone 1 (Darwin). Simulation results also indicated that applying PCMs on external walls would improve energy efficiency performance more than applying them to the ceiling, and PCMs on longer solar exposed walls performed better than those applied on shorter solar exposed facades. It was also found that the energy efficiency performance would decrease when the PCM melting point was outside the thermostat range of the particular climate.