Direct evaporative cooling (DEC) is one of the most
commonly used cooling systems in many parts of the
world with mainly hot and dry climatic conditions.
Various simulation-based studies have been conducted to
explore the potential of direct evaporative cooling in
buildings. However, current dynamic thermal simulation
tools use a simplified on/off control approach and do not
allow modelling of situations where advanced algorithms
are used in controlling DEC units. This paper couples
EnergyPlus with Dymola® to simulate and assess the
benefits of sophisticated control strategies for DEC units
in mixed-mode buildings. This is a novel simulation
approach for investigating control of DEC units in
buildings that provides great flexibility for investigating
future advanced control algorithms. The simulated results
suggested that using the proposed sophisticated control
algorithms for DEC units it is possible to achieve energy
savings up to 35% compared to the base-case scenario and
achieve up to 92% comfort hours for Ahmedabad, India.
Similar results were predicted for Gatwick, UK.