BUILDING ENVELOPE ENERGY OPTIMIZATION FOR PALESTINIAN SCHOOL IN GAZA STRIP

Abstract

In most cases, the Palestinian school buildings are followed by standard prototype designs that are not site-specific or climate-based. However, in terms of sustainability and energy-efficiency, the performance of these prototype designs becomes questionable. Although strategies have been developed to achieve sustainability in the educational spaces such as classrooms, these buildings still suffer from thermal discomfort at periods of learning that lead many school to install HVAC systems to maintain indoor comfort. The growing demand for air-conditioning systems creates a challenge against the urgent need to reduce energy consumption in school buildings. This PhD research developed a methodology with steps that could be followed by designers when evaluating the performance of building envelope system designs for typical classrooms block for standardized design of Palestinian school building located in Gaza Strip, Palestine. Therefore, the research focused on energy performance of building envelope of school buildings in Gaza. The energy benchmarking concerned on evaluating the energy performance of the air-conditioned school buildings in terms of energy use for heating, cooling, and artificial lighting within thermal comfort. The research hypothesis that existing performance assessment methods and previous studies at energy benchmarking that applied for buildings and building systems could offer useful insights for the development of a main approach. As the building envelope is a key contributor in a building’s energy performance, its values can be mutually compared, helping in the identification of which design is the most efficient and essential for the assessment building systems. Therefore, the school energy demand can be reduced by optimizing the orientation of the site, occupancy density, and the lighting controls to reach the best practice or optimum solutions for local climate schools in Gaza strip through being based common considering proposed standards The research methodology started at analyzing the current state in school building performance and rating systems. A literature review of the educational system, building design and local energy code was conducted, and the local climate was analyzed.