Design Your Building to Utilize Passive Solar Power
The sun is the oldest source of energy available on earth. The sun provides an abundant supply of energy that can be used in various ways. Whereas solar panels and solar systems are being designed to give you the benefits of active solar energy, solar energy can be used passively as well. Indeed, the passive usage of solar power offers you advantages like cost-effectiveness and other long-term benefits.However, it's important to design your buildings such that they can utilize solar power passively. In order to design your building to use solar power, you need to first be clear about the goals of using solar power. For instance, you can passively use solar power to heat your building or to provide a good ventilation to cool your building. In addition, you can reduce the need for artificial lighting by designing you building such that it uses sunlight as the main source of light.In order to use passive solar power in your building, a consideration of air space, thermal mass, building material, location of windows, construction of rooftops etc is quite important. Here are few important points that need to be considered while designing a building:- Buildings that get exposure to sun from east of south receive the maximum heat and light from the sun during morning hours. However, the buildings that are exposed to sun on the west of south receive maximum sunshine during the late afternoon hours. Therefore, you should model your building considering the usage and desired temperature during your desired time of the day.- In order to enable your walls to absorb solar energy during the day, build masonry walls that envelop thermal mass within them. This way, you can ensure that building walls absorb heat during the day and release the heat during the dark and cold hours of the night.- The rooms that require the maximum amount of heat during the day should be constructed on the southern side of your house. On the other hand, the ones that need to remain relatively cooler should be on the northern side of your building.- You should make smaller windows in the rooms that remain relatively cooler and do not get direct exposure to sun. This will help retain heat by avoiding heat loss through windows.- While deciding the size of windows, check how much of the carpet area of your room is getting daylight. For effective usage of sunshine for lighting, at least 15% of the carpet area should get direct sunlight.
