Energy Impact of Radiative Cooling Paints in Warehouses Under Various United States Climates

Abstract Although radiative cooling research is widely found in the literature, no comprehensive study has yet been conducted on the impact of novel radiant cooling (>0.91 reflectance) on the energy efficiency of warehouses. In this work, we develop three building models based on a Department of Energy prototype warehouse model using trnsys, representing a typical warehouse with a black roof, a typical warehouse with a white roof, and a warehouse with novel radiative cooling (RC) paint on its roof. These models are run for 15 different cities, each representative of a different ASHRAE climate zone, to better understand the impact of RC in many different climates. It was found that an RC-coated roof in a warehouse could reduce the building's annual heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) loads by up to 14.11 kWh/m2 of the roof area compared to a black roof, resulting in a maximum reduction in energy costs of 0.55 $/m2 or $2646/year for a large 4835 m2 warehouse. Similarly, replacing the typical white roof coating with an RC coating could reduce the warehouse's energy consumption by up to 8.17 kWh/ m2 of roof area, thus reducing energy costs by as much as 0.29 $/m2 or $1386/year for a 4835 m2 warehouse. In addition, applying RC paint to an unconditioned warehouse could reduce the building's ASHRAE Standard 55 indoor temperature exceedance by up to 1330 h/year compared to a black roof and up to 532 h/year compared to a white roof.