Passive cooling systems in residential buildings

The performance of four passive cooling systems, nocturnal convective cooling, nocturnal radiative cooling, direct evaporative cooling and conductive earth‐coupled cooling, is evaluated for representative environmental conditions in the temperate, hot‐humid and hot‐arid climatic zones of the United States. The analysis indicates that substantial portion of the cooling load of a typical energy‐efficient single family residential building can be eliminated with any of these passive systems. Depending on system type and climatic zone, the building cooling load can be reduced by 1/3 to over 4/5 of its original value. The corresponding energy savings would amount to a minimum of 25 TWh/yr and could potentially exceed 50 TWh/yr, if proper passive cooling systems were to be employed throughout the country. Incorporation of passive cooling models in building energy analysis codes will be necessary to determine more precisely the potential of each system. Field testing will also be required to further evaluate thi...