Study on indoor thermal environment and energy consumption of traditional dwellings of ethnic minorities in Sichuan plateau

In this paper, field tests, questionnaire surveys, and DesignBuilder were used to analyse the indoor thermal environment and energy consumption of traditional houses in a traditional ethnic minority village of Western Sichuan Plateau of China, The results showed that during the summer test period, the outdoor temperature range was 9.3-7.8 °C and the relative humidity range was 53.5-67.4%, while the indoor temperature range of the tested room was 13.3-2.3 °C, and the relative humidity range was 69.1-83.0%. The humidity is high, and the thermal environment does not meet the requirement of local standard. Therefore, corresponding energy-saving optimization measures are proposed. In the winter heating building model data, compared with the heat load before optimization, the energy saving reaches about 56.5%. In addition, the carbon emissions and economic suitability of different heating methods were evaluated. Electric heating, coal-fired heating and biomass heating have payback periods of 11 years, 24 years and 6 years respectively. With perspective focusing on the special regional and ethnic characteristics of the plateau, this research aims to promote energy conservation and sustainable development of local traditional buildings of ethnic minorities, and help improve the living environment of the Sichuan Plateau. In the future, a long-term monitoring mechanism can be established to continuously track residential buildings after the adoption of optimization measures to evaluate the actual effect of these measures.