Study on the influence of albedo on building heat environment in a year-round

The research of energy saving is one of the highlights of buildings environment. According to the albedo change of the wall-facing materials of urban buildings, two building models were constructed, of which the internal and external microclimate parameters were measured under certain meteorological conditions in different seasons. The experimental results show that the decrease of indoor air temperature was up to 4.67 °C with the average diurnal temperature decrease up to 3.53 °C in summer, and the increase was up to 2.81 °C in winter when the albedo changed from 0.21 to 0.86. Moreover, Laplace integral transform method was used to analyze building energy saving. The results indicate that the wall-facing materials with high albedo have the function of heat-protection and heat-insulation and could reduce 150.3 W per day of the buildings’ cooling load in summer and 69.5 W per day of heating load in winter. The research results confirm that employing high albedo coatings on the building exterior wall is an active and effective approach to improve the urban buildings’ micro-heat environment.