Use of solar energy as an alternative to fossil fuels has been widely discussed in recent years. Heavy reliance on fossil fuels, and, as a consequence, dependency on scarce resources usage of which has a negative impact on environment led to search of alternative sources of energy. Passive solar design has a number of advantages when it comes to alternative energy solutions due to low cost and high level of efficiency.
Integration of passive solar design reduces the need for mechanical heating, cooling, and artificial lightning during the daytime which is cost efficient in the long run, minimizes energy consumption and, as a consequence, dependency on non-renewable sources of energy, is environmentally clean, and can be easily implemented independent of the geographic location. The debates on the issue are ongoing. And even though there is some rationality to claims of opponents of solar design solutions, their perspective on the issue is short sighted, since aside from purely economic benefits, opponents fail to consider dependency on non-renewable sources of energy such as fossil fuels which will gradually become an economic burden for the vast majority of countries throughout the world.
Passive solar design of buildings does involve more initial spending, since it includes such passive solar features as thermal mass, increased glazing and overhangs.
However, due to the fact that buildings with solar design require substantially less mechanical heating and cooling, annual reduced maintenance costs will be realized over the whole life time of the building. Going even further then this, since individual design of buildings is not required, but largely it will vary depending on the climate zone; cost per building will reduce, as the number of building with integrated passive solar design increases.
The experiment proved to be very effective in China. Country was subdivided into five major climate zones and comfort zones based on the climate zones have been developed. Further, bioclimatic building design charts have been developed, and finally, the system was implemented. The results were astonishing: in Guangzhou due to integrated natural ventilation mechanical air-conditioning would have to function only 17% of its initial work load, while Kunming initially required mechanical heating 80% of the time in a year, now supplementary heating is required only 10% of the year, in Beijing required mechanical heating would can be limited to 30% through with the passive solar design used during the construction process. This is a perfect solution for China, where fossil fuels are especially scarce as compared with other countries. A similar experiment took place in North Cyprus and implementation of passive solar design also proved to be efficient on practice.
