The Development of Residential and Commercial Building Energy Standards for Egypt

Abstract

In 2000, the Housing and Building Research Centre of Egypt obtained a United Nations grant to develop energy standards for residential and commercial buildings in Egypt. Over the past three years, the authors have worked as an international consultant team, bringing to the project many years of experience in the development of building energy standards in the US and other countries, surveys of existing building conditions and energy use, the use of computer simulations to analyze building energy performance, and the design and construction of energyefficient buildings. The proposed residential energy code was completed in June 2003, to be followed by the proposed commercial energy code in the spring of 2004. Both of these standards will then undergo a public review process prior to being submitted to the government for promulgation. While the codes were being finalized, the authors also developed a detailed implementation plan for putting into place the infrastructure, training, and supporting materials and software to properly promulgate and enforce the codes, as well as initiate a major program of demonstration buildings to transform the Egyptian market for energy efficiency in buildings. The entire project will be completed by summer 2004. A key component in the development of the proposed codes is the use of the DOE-2 hourly energy simulation program to evaluate building energy performance. The authors have (1) devoted months of effort in providing training in the use of the DOE-2 program, both in Egypt and in the U.S., and (2) provided technical support in developing Egyptian weather data and a Windows-based program to do parametric DOE-2 simulations. Several prototypical residential and commercial buildings have been developed that have been used by the project Simulation Working Group to evaluate the energy savings from a comprehensive set of envelope and HVAC system measures. Since not all buildings in Egypt are equipped with mechanical cooling, we also added the Fanger Comfort Model to DOE-2 that enabled the consultant and Egyptian teams to estimate improvements in indoor comfort in addition to building energy savings. This presentation will describe the overall scope of the project, the research efforts undertaken in support of the standards, and give an overview of the draft residential and commercial building energy efficiency codes.