Energy-Saving Analysis of Low-Rise Prefabricated Building Integrating with Metamaterial-Based Cool Roof in China

The novel metamaterial-based radiative cooling film has recently been developed and reported a 110 W/m2 cooling power on a daily average. The most convenient application of this metamaterial-based radiative cooling film is to integrate with building as the cool roof. However, the cool roof has always only benefit to the top floor of the building. Since the prefabricated building, commonly lower than two-floor, has relatively higher roof area to floor area ratio, the metamaterial-based cool roof is perfectly applicable to them as renewable energy-based new cooling mechanism. In this study, the prefabricated building is modelled with EnergyPlus, and then the detailed simulation analysis has been conducted for five locations in China, including Harbin, Beijing, Kunming, Nanjing, and Guangzhou. The results show that the adoption of metamaterial-based cool roof to low-rise prefabricated building will save cooling electricity consumption by 18.7–34.8% annually.