Design of Energy Model of Greenhouse Including Plant and Estimation of Heating and Cooling Loads for a Multi-Span Plastic-Film Greenhouse by Building Energy Simulation

The importance of energy saving technology for managing greenhouse was recently highlighted. For practical use of energy in greenhouse, it is necessary to simulate energy flow precisely and estimate heating/cooling loads of greenhouse. So the main purpose of this study was to develope and to validate greenhouse energy model and to estimate annual/maximum energy loads using Building Energy Simulation (BES). Field experiments were carried out in a multi-span plastic-film greenhouse in Jeju Island (33.2N, 126.3E) for 2 months. To develop energy model of the greenhouse, a set of sensors was used to measure the greenhouse microclimate such as air temperature, humidity, leaf temperature, solar radiation, carbon dioxide concentration and so on. Moreover, characteristic length of plant leaf, leaf area index and diffuse non-interceptance were utilized to calculate sensible and latent heat exchange of plant. The internal temperature of greenhouse was compared to validate the greenhouse energy model. Developed model provided a good estimation for the internal temperature throughout the experiments period (coefficients of determination > 0.85, index of agreement > 0.92). After the model validation, we used last 10 years weather data to calculate energy loads of greenhouse according to growth stage of greenhouse crop. The tendency of heating/cooling loads change was depends on external weather condition and optimal temperature for growing crops at each stage. In addition, maximum heating/cooling loads of reference greenhouse were estimated to 644,014 and 756,456 kJ·hr, respectively. Additional key words : building energy simulation, energy loads, greenhouse