A study on the characteristics of nighttime bedroom cooling load in tropics and subtropics

In both tropical and subtropical regions, residential air conditioning serves to maintain appropriate indoor thermal environments not only at daytime, but also at nighttime in bedrooms for sleeping. However, the current practices for air conditioning are primarily concerned with the situations in which people are awake at daytime. Therefore, these may not be directly applicable to nighttime bedroom air conditioning. This paper reports on a simulation study on the characteristics of nighttime bedroom cooling load in tropics and subtropics, using a building energy simulation program. The weather conditions of and the typical arrangements of high-rise residential blocks in Hong Kong are used in the simulation study. The simulation results on the cooling load characteristics in bedrooms under three different operating modes of room air conditioners (RACs) at the summer design day, the breakdown of the total cooling load in a bedroom at nighttime operating mode (NOM), indoor air temperature and mean radiant temperature variation at NOM, and the effects of indoor design air temperature on the cooling load characteristics at NOM are presented. The differences in the cooling load characteristics among three different operating modes and the issues related to the sizing of RACs used in bedrooms are discussed.