Research

Climate and energy systems are intricately interacted, influencing and exacerbating each other on both global and local scales. Figure 1: Interaction of climate and energy systems.

Urban renewable technologies, such as PV, have great potential to improve energy efficiency and mitigate global warming. Figure 2: PV role in the building energy and urban climate feedback.

My research primarily focuses on the performance and impact of various urban heat island mitigation strategies within the fields of urban climate and building energy, leveraging both experimental and simulation methodologies.

Experiment Study

We have conducted a full-scale experiment to explore different rooftop mitigation strategies.

Figure 3: Site map of the four studied roofs at HKUST campus.

Modelling Study

When city has large-scale implementation of vertical PV facade, their impacts on urban energy balance are unknown. To fill the research gap, a building-integrated photovoltaic parameterization scheme has been developed and incorporated into a building energy model coupled with a single-layer urban canopy model (BEM-SLUCM). This modelling framework facilitates a detailed analysis of indoor-outdoor interactions and assesses the impacts of PV and green strategies on urban climate.

Figure 4: Urban Canopy Model Framework.

Additionally, a bottom-up physics-based urban scale building energy model is developed to estimate the performance of renewable and energy-efficient strategies from the building to the city scale. Figure 5: Urban Scale Building Energy Model.