SHADING: PASSIVE COOLING AND ENERGY CONSERVATION IN BUILDINGS

Buildings consume significant large amount of energy for cooling, heating, ventilation and lighting in buildings to create desirable thermal comfort conditions. In warm and tropical climates excess solar gain results in high cooling energy consumption. The depletion of conventional energy and high cost of non-conventional energy enforces a demand for energy conscious designs of buildings. Natural and passive cooling uses nonmechanical methods to maintain a comfortable indoor temperature. Natural cooling can be achieved by proper layout and orientation of building, appropriate shape, insulation, high thermal capacity and resistance of the building materials, good landscape design, proper shading devices, overhangs, external surface finish. The most effective method to cool a building in summer is to keep the heat from building up in the first place. The most important passive cooling strategy, regardless of mass is shading. Shading is a simple method to block the sun before it can get into the building. Shading minimizes the incident solar radiation and cool the building effectively and hence dramatically affect building energy performance. In this paper an attempt has been made to study different shading strategies that can be employed to shade the building, which provides natural cooling and finally helps in energy conservation in buildings.