Energy and Buildings 42 (2010) 24002405

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Energy and Buildings

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Investigation on energy performance and energy payback period of

application of balcony for residential apartment in Hong Kong
A.L.S. Chan a, , T.T. Chow b
a
b

Division of Building Science and Technology, College of Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong
School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 11 September 2009
Received in revised form 20 July 2010
Accepted 10 August 2010
Keywords:
Balcony
Overhang
EnergyPlus
Energy payback period

a b s t r a c t
The provision of balcony to the living room of a residential at offers a number of merits including
improved view enjoyment, enhanced ventilation and increased planting space. In addition, a balcony
can act as an overhang and provide solar shading as well as electricity saving of the air-conditioning
system. This paper reports the ndings on the energy and environmental impact due to the provision
of a balcony. In this study, a typical residential at with balcony constructed at the living room was
modeled and the energy performance was investigated with the use of the typical weather data set of
a subtropical city, Hong Kong. The effects of balconys orientation and glazing material of window were
also evaluated. It was found that the residential ats facing various orientations (N, E, S, W, NE, SE, SW and
NW) can offer substantial energy saving in air-conditioning system due to the shading effect of balcony.
The building case with southwest facing balcony and clear glass glazed window gave the highest saving
percentage of 12.3% in annual air-conditioning consumption. In terms of cost payback period, the values
were estimated as 25.9 years (based on extra construction cost of a balcony) and over 100 years (based on
extra purchasing cost), respectively. On the other hand, the energy payback period was 22.4 years for this
building case. The provision of balcony to the living room of residential at was found environmentally
feasible in Hong Kong.
2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In recent years, there is cooperative effort to reduce greenhouse
gas (GHG) emission all over the world. The main objective is to
pursue a blue sky under which there can be sustainable development in the society. Minimization of energy use is the key to foster
GHG reduction. Building, as one of the largest electricity consumers,
can make a marked contribution to energy conservation as well as
GHG removal and mitigation of urban heat island effect by sophisticated building design. There are various architectural features that
can inuence the indoor climate and electricity consumption of a
building such as building layout, orientation, color of opaque wall,
window size, glazing type, and shading of window. In the aspect
of window shading, either a simple overhang over a window or a
balcony can be adopted.
A balcony can provide solar shading to building at since the slab
of the balcony of the upper oor acts as an overhang to the window
of the underneath oor. The solar heat gain into building as well as
the energy consumption of the air-conditioning (A/C) unit can be
reduced. Moreover, because of the enlarged size of window open-

Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 3442 9676; fax: +852 3442 9716.
E-mail address: bsapplec@cityu.edu.hk (A.L.S. Chan).
0378-7788/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2010.08.009

ing on the building facade with balcony constructed, the natural

ventilation in a building at can be enhanced by increased airow.
In order to encourage the property developers to incorporate
more environmental features into new building projects, the local
government has provided an incentive through a change in the
building regulation. With effective from 2001, there is a exibility to exclude the balcony area from the oor area calculation, i.e.
developable area, in the residential project development. Residential buildings with balconies have become common in Hong Kong.
From the viewpoint of business, the saleable oor area of the residential development can be increased. For environmental merits,
both utilization of daylight and induction of natural ventilation can
be enhanced with the provision of balcony. Moreover, it acts as
a shading device to reduce the amount of direct solar radiation
transmitted into a building. The maximum permissible area of the
balcony is 4% of the ats size, or 5 m2 , whichever is less. This regulation is applicable to all residential apartments constructed with
balconies irrespective of the orientations of the ats.
However, the effectiveness of such measure was queried by the
building professionals [1]. Firstly, the performance with respect
to blocking the solar radiation is not identical for balconies facing different orientations. There is no detailed information on the
year-round saving in A/C consumption resulted by the provision of
balcony in Hong Kong. Moreover, the cost effectiveness of installing

A.L.S. Chan, T.T. Chow / Energy and Buildings 42 (2010) 24002405

an additional balcony to a building at has not been thoroughly

studied.
There are a number of previous studies on the performance of
building at equipped with overhang/balcony. Raeissi and Taheri
had investigated the optimum dimension of overhang, including
the width, lateral extension and spacing of overhangs, for energy
saving in the air-conditioning system [2]. The results revealed that,
under the climatic condition in Iran, there was a reduction of around
12.7% in cooling load during summer season by appropriate overhang shading. On the other hand, there was insignicant increase
(0.6%) in winter heating demand. Yu et al. had similar ndings from
a study on low-energy envelope design of residential building in
Changsha, China [3]. By using an integrative shading of overhangs
and ns in the living room of a residential apartment, the cooling electric consumption was reduced by 7.99% while the heating
electric demand was increased by 2.83%. Computer program TRNSYS had been used by Florides et al. to study various measures,
including solar shading by overhang, to lower the building energy
consumption in a typical house located in Cyprus [4]. It was found
that a saving of 719% in annual cooling load could be achieved for a
house constructed with balcony and different insulation materials.
In the study by Lee and Tavil [5], it was revealed that electrochromic
(EC) window with overhang could signicantly reduce the average
annual daylight glare index and deliver signicant annual energy
use saving for large-area window. The effect of balconies on ventilation induced wind pressure on the opposite walls of a ve-storey
building had been studied by Chand et al. [6]. It was reported that
the provision of balcony altered the wind pressure distribution on
windward wall but did not introduce signicant change in it on the
leeward side. The combined effect of balcony, opening design and
internal division on the indoor airow was studied by Prianto and
Depecker [7,8]. Local average velocity coefcient was used as to
indicate the ow pattern inside the building. The result identied
that opening and balcony designs were helpful in increasing natural indoor air movement while the effect of internal division is not
signicant. Lee et al. investigated the effect of balcony design on the
reduction of exterior noise by eld measurement, scaled model and
computer simulation [9]. A maximum noise reduction of 23 dB was
obtained. The results indicated that the application of balcony for
exterior noise reduction was effective in high-rise building where
tall barriers could not be built. Similar study was carried out by
Kim and Kim [10]. Some other researchers [1113] examined the
reduction of vertical ame spread due to the presence of a balcony
in high-rise apartment res. By varying the depth and geometry
of the balcony, an optimum conguration was identied to reduce
the spread of vertical re on the exterior wall of building.
Under a subtropical weather condition, like the Hong Kong
situation, little work has been done for investigating the energy
performance of incorporating a balcony into the residential at.
Moreover, so far there was no life-cycle cost analysis carried out
for economic evaluation of installing a balcony in the residential
apartment in Hong Kong. The objective of this study is to assess
the energy saving potential of living room with balcony in residential apartment. A residential at without balcony has been taken
as a base case for comparison. The study covered all seasons for
cases with three different types of glazing materials, facing various orientations. Through building energy simulations, the energy
performance of the residential at was studied. Moreover, the
economic feasibility and energy payback period of incorporating
balcony into residential at was studied and the results were presented in this paper.
2. Methodology
In this study, a literature survey on 18 residential development projects had been conducted to obtain information about the

2401

Fig. 1. Plan view of a typical residential at in Hong Kong.

building design of high-rise residential apartment in Hong Kong. A

typical oor plan of a residential apartment, as shown in Fig. 1, was
identied and adopted in this study. It is a 3-bedroom residential
at of area 95 m2 with a rectangular living/dining room which is a
typical design arrangement in Hong Kong. There is no self-shading
from the adjacent blocks. Two cross-sectional views of the living
room were illustrated in Fig. 2. The rst one is a base case without
balcony (Fig. 2(a)) and the other one is a at with balcony in the
living room (Fig. 2(b)). The area ratio of the balcony to that of the
living/dining room is 0.19 while the aspect ratio of the balcony (i.e.
width:depth) is 2.73.
There are two major types of A/C system commonly adopted in
the residential ats in Hong Kong, namely window-mounted type
air-conditioner and split type air-conditioner. The former is usually
used in the bedrooms while the latter is widely adopted in the living/dining rooms. In the split type air-conditioner, the evaporator
is installed onto the ceiling of the living/dining room and the condenser together with the compressor is normally mounted at the
external wall of the lightwell. Natural ventilation or supply of fresh
air is mainly enhanced through the operation of exhaust fan in the
restroom. Due to limited space in residential apartment, energyconservation device such as air-side economizer is not commonly
used in the A/C system of residential ats in Hong Kong. Information on the typical construction materials and design data of the
A/C system for the living room of the residential at in this study
are listed in Table 1 [14].
The hourly cooling energy of the residential ats with and without shading effect of the balcony facing various orientations (N, E, S,
W, NE, SE, SW and NW) were evaluated by a building energy simulation program EnergyPlus developed by the Department of Energy,
US [15]. Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) hourly weather le for
Table 1
Design data of construction materials and air-conditioning system in a typical residential at.
Construction of external wall

5 mm mosaic tile (outer layer)

10 mm cement
100 mm heavy concrete
10 mm gypsum plastering (inner layer)

Gross oor area of apartment

Equipment power intensity
Lighting power intensity
Indoor design temperature
No. of occupants
Operating hours of
air-conditioning unit of
living room

95 m2
142 W/room
14 W/m2
25.5 C
4
1:00 pm to 10:00 pm

2402

A.L.S. Chan, T.T. Chow / Energy and Buildings 42 (2010) 24002405

Fig. 2. Cross-sectional views of a typical residential at without and with balcony in living room.

Hong Kong [16] was used as the weather input in the simulation.
The study includes investigation on the energy performance of residential ats installed with different types of glazing materials at the
window opening of the living room. Three types of glazing material, namely clear glass (clr), absorptive glass (abs) and reective
glass (ref) were used in the building cases. The thermal and optical properties of these glazing materials were listed in Table 2. The
investigation covered all seasons for the various building cases and
the year-round energy saving projection was generated. Analysis
on A/C saving of the residential ats with the effect of solar shading was carried out. Moreover, the economic and environmental
evaluation on the provision of balcony to the residential ats was
conducted and the ndings were detailed in the following sections.
3. Analysis on system performance
Hong Kong is located in subtropical region, tending to have
a hot and humid summer while the winter season is relatively
short and mild. In spring, the weather is mainly cloudy with dry
northerly winds. The monthly mean air temperature is around
18 C and the monthly mean daily total solar radiation ranges from
9.1 to 11.3 MJ/m2 day. From May to September, the climate is hot
and humid with occasional showers, thunderstorm and tropical
cyclones. The maximum air temperature often excess 31 C in the

afternoon whereas the air temperature generally remains above

26 C with high humidity (80% or above) at nighttime. The solar
radiation is rich and the peak occurs in July with a monthly mean
value of 17.2 MJ/m2 day. During October, November and December,
there is often clear sky condition with plenty of sunshine. The air
temperature is mild and the relative humidity is low.
Due to the temperate climate condition in winter, heating
demand is occasional in Hong Kong. Therefore, in this study, the
investigation was focused on the cooling energy of the residential
apartment in summer season. Computer simulations on year-round
cooling energy of the living room of the apartment were carried
out. In order to investigate the energy performance of the apartment constructed with balcony at different orientations, a number
of simulations had been run. The results were plotted in Fig. 3 which
compared the annual A/C electricity consumption (in kWh) for the
living room without balcony (base case) versus a case with balcony,
at eight different orientations. Clear glazing material was adopted
in the window in both building cases. The corresponding saving

Table 2
Thermal and optical properties of glazing materials.

Thermal transmittance
Thermal reectance
Visible transmittance
Visible reectance
Thickness (mm)

Single clear
glass

Single
absorptive
glass

Single
reective
glass

0.771
0.070
0.884
0.080
5.7

0.486
0.053
0.533
0.056
5.7

0.275
0.369
0.464
0.314
6.0

Fig. 3. Annual A/C electricity consumption and saving percentage of building cases
without and with balcony (with clear glazing type).

A.L.S. Chan, T.T. Chow / Energy and Buildings 42 (2010) 24002405

Fig. 4. Annual A/C electricity percentage saving of building cases with balcony with
various glazing types.

percentages (in %) were also shown in the same gure for analysis.
Comparing the eight cases as shown in Fig. 3, the case with balcony facing southwest gives the best annual saving performance at
12.3%. It is because Hong Kong is located in the subtropical zone and
the southwestern window receives much more solar radiation in
summer so that the shading effect of balcony becomes substantial
[17]. On the contrast, a northern window receives an insignicant
amount of solar radiation in summer. It is reected by the lowest
saving percentage (3.4%) in A/C consumption. As the orientation
of the balcony moves from north towards southwest, there is a
tendency of increase in saving percentage of A/C electricity consumption, with an exemption in the case at southern orientation
where the saving percentage drops to 9.3%. It is because southern
window receives less amount of solar radiation than the case facing southeast or southwest, particularly at noontime when the solar
angle is high. The same conclusions are reached for the cases with
absorptive and reective glazing window, as illustrated in Fig. 4.
Since the values of solar transmittance of the reective and absorptive glazing are lower than that of clear glazing, the amount of solar
heat gain as well as the A/C electricity consumption is smaller than
that of the case with clear glazing. The shading effect of balcony
becomes less signicant than that in the case with clear glazing.
As a result, the cases with reective glazing offer the least saving
percentages as compared to the case with clear glazing. The maximum saving of A/C consumption was found from the case with
balcony facing southwest constructed with clear glazing window.
The absolute and percentage saving are 181.9 kWh/yr and 12.3%,
respectively.
Since the southwest facing balcony offers the best performance
in A/C energy saving and clear glass is widely selected and applied as
the glazing pane of fenestration in the residential building in Hong
Kong, the monthly A/C saving of this case was plotted in Fig. 5 for
further analysis. In this case, the minimum and maximum A/C savings occur in March and October, respectively. The corresponding
electricity saving are 7.72 and 22.46 kWh. In addition to the electricity saving, there is also reduction in electric demand (with unit
W or VA) resulted from the provision of balcony to the residential
at. The maximum reduction is 200 W per at in this building case
occurred in October. Although there is no demand charge for residential buildings under the current tariff structure in Hong Kong,
the reduction in electric demand can mitigate the need for more
electric energy production, i.e. reducing the required capacity of
the power plant.
The above simulation results indicate that the savings of A/C
consumption in north, northeast and northwest facing balconies
are much lower than the cases at other orientations. However, in
order to have a thorough evaluation on the effectiveness of a bal-

2403

Fig. 5. Monthly A/C electricity saving and reduction in electric demand for a building
case facing southwest.

cony in the living room of a residential apartment, it is essential

to include investigation on the economic and environmental viability of providing a balcony to a residential at. The details were
presented in the next section of this paper.
4. Economic and environmental evaluation
To conduct an economic evaluation of a residential at constructed with a balcony, it is necessary to include both the material
and labor costs for constructing a balcony. Fig. 6 shows a crosssectional and a plan view of a typical balcony construction in
the living room of a residential apartment. The major materials
involved in constructing a balcony are tensile steel rod, cement and
aggregate. It consists of a mesh of tensile steel rod constructed into
a 3 m 1.1 m reinforced concrete block. Steel fence was installed
around the perimeter of the balcony. The construction cost of a typical balcony was tabulated in Table 3. It can be seen that the highest
material cost comes from the steel (USD 61.3), followed by cement
(USD 27.7) and aggregate (USD 13.6). Through data and information collection from the local suppliers and contractors [18], it was
found that the unit rates of labor costs for bar bender/xer, concretor and scaffolding were USD 137/man/day, USD 118/man/day and
USD 118/man/day, respectively. The total cost including material
and labor cost for constructing a balcony for a residential apartment was estimated as USD 475.6. Table 4 gives an estimation of
cost payback period of a balcony with clear glazing window facing southwest orientation. In Hong Kong, the electricity charge is
USD 0.122/kWh. Comparing the case with southwest facing balcony to the base case, an annual saving in A/C electricity energy of
181.9 kWh was found. In this study, an average escalation rate of
electricity of 2.62% [19] and a discount rate of 4.25% [20] over the
Table 3
Construction cost of a balcony for a residential apartment.
Material

Quantities (kg)

Unit cost
(USD/ton)

Cost (USD)

Tensile steel rod

Steel fence
Cement
Aggregate (ne)
Aggregate (course)
(1020 mm)

55
23
380
649
973

786
786
73
9
8

43.2
18.1
27.7
5.8
7.8

Labor

Man-day

Unit cost
(USD/day)

Cost (USD)

Steel bar
banner/xer
Concretor
Scaffolding
Total cost (USD)

137

137

1
1

118
118

118
118
475.6

2404

A.L.S. Chan, T.T. Chow / Energy and Buildings 42 (2010) 24002405

Fig. 6. Cross-sectional and plan views of a typical balcony construction.

last decade were used. The cost payback period was estimated as
25.9 years, as shown in Table 4, which is shorter than the life span
(50 years) of a typical high-rise residential building in Hong Kong.
However, using the extra purchasing cost of a at with balcony,
instead of the additional construction cost, in the life-cycle cost
analysis could be more appropriate. It is because the period for the
property owner to recover the extra purchasing cost paid can be
evaluated. Through private communication with local real estate
agents, it was found that the added value of market price for a
residential at with a balcony is about USD 12,000. With this information, the payback period estimated will be over 100 years which
is economically infeasible.
Evaluation on the performance of balcony also addresses the
environmental aspect. Energy payback period is an index generally used for this issue. It can be dened as the length of time a
device/system takes to payback the energy used in the manufacturing and production of a device/system. If the energy payback period
is shorter than the lifespan of a device/system, the net energy saving
can contribute towards the reduction of greenhouse gas emission.
Steel rod, cement and aggregate are the major materials used for
constructing a balcony. For production of steel, iron ore, coal and
limestone are the major feed materials in a blast furnace in which

molten steel is produced. With steel rening facility and continuous

casting, slabs of steel can be formed. These slabs of steel are then
passed to a reheat furnace and transmitted into a rolling machine in
which various forms of steel product can be manufactured. A value
of 10.56 kWh/kg [21] was adopted as the embodied energy of the
tensile steel rods as shown in Table 5.
Limestone is the basic raw material used to produce cement. It
is mixed with clay, sand, iron and bottom ash and then ground into
ne powder. Then the ne powder is heated up to 1500 C. The new
product is combined with small amount of gypsum and limestone
and then ground to ne powder and become the nal product
cement. Aggregate is used as reinforcement to the strength of the
balcony structure. There are two major types of aggregate, namely
ne and course aggregates, according to their sizes. Limestone,
granite and marble are the main raw materials for producing aggregate. The evaluation of embodied energy for cement and aggregate
is also summarized in Table 5. The total energy required for the
construction of a balcony for a living room of a typical residential
at is 4077 kWh for the building case in this study.

Table 5
Embodied energy of a balcony for a residential apartment.
Material

Quantities
(kg)

Embodied
Energy
(kWh/kg)

Embodied Energy
(Subtotal) (kWh)

Tensile steel rod

Steel fence
Cement
Aggregate (ne)
Aggregate (course) (1020 mm)
Total embodied energy (kWh)

55
23
380
649
973

10.56
10.56
1.56
1.64
1.64

581
243
593
1064
1596
4077

Table 4
Estimation of cost payback period.
Material and installation cost
Annual saving in A/C electricity consumption
Annual saving in electricity cost (USD 0.122/kWh)
Escalation rate of electricity
Discount rate
Cost payback period (based on extra construction cost)

USD 475.6
181.9 kWh
USD 22.2
2.62%
4.25%
25.9 years

A.L.S. Chan, T.T. Chow / Energy and Buildings 42 (2010) 24002405

Table 6
Annual energy saving and energy payback periods of building cases with balcony
facing various orientations.
Orientations

Annual energy
saving (kWh/yr)

Energy payback
period (yrs)

SW
W
SE
E
S
NW
NE
N

181.9
168.0
158.8
143.6
123.0
96.6
93.4
38.8

22.4
24.3
25.7
28.4
33.1
42.2
43.7
105.1

2405

stantial energy saving in A/C system due to the shading effect of

balcony. The building case with southwest facing balcony and clear
glass glazed window gave the highest saving percentage of 12.3% in
annual A/C consumption. In terms of energy payback periods, most
of the cases in this study were found environmentally feasible in
Hong Kong. The above study, however, did not cover the shading
effect caused by adjacent ats or blocks. Further research on the
performance of balcony with the effect of self-shading by adjacent
ats/blocks could be carried out to further evaluate the economic
and environmental sustainability of the provision of balcony to
building at.
Acknowledgement

The energy payback period (EPP) can be calculated by Eq. (1) as

follows:
EPP =

PECenergy
Esav

The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant

from CityU (Project No. 7002495).

(1)
References

where PECenergy is the primary energy consumed during the lifecycle phases of the balcony (kWh) and Esav is the annual A/C energy
saving (kWh/year). As evaluated in Section 3, an annual electricity
saving of 181.9 kWh was resulted from the provision of a balcony
to the building case facing southwest. The corresponding energy
payback period is 22.4 years, i.e. the energy saved during the rst
22.4 years of the lifespan can recover the primary energy required
for the production and installation of the balcony.
From the viewpoint of environmental concern, each unit of
energy consumed in buildings has an implication for GHG emission. In Hong Kong, there is almost 100% thermoelectricity power
generation. To evaluate the GHG mitigation by the provision of balcony, an emission factor of 0.7 kg/kWh for CO2 average content was
used in this study [22]. The GHG emission from the consumption
of purchased electricity can be estimated by:
GHG Emission = Quantity of purchased electricity
Emission Factor

(2)

Over an assumed lifespan of 50 years for the residential at with

a balcony in the present study, the net saving of electricity consumption after the energy payback period is 5020 kWh. This cut
down in electricity consumption yields a reduction in GHG emission of 3.5 tones of CO2 equivalent per at.
By using the same calculation procedures, the energy payback
periods for the cases with balconies facing the other seven orientations were determined and listed in Table 6. Most of the building
cases are found environmentally viable. That means the energy
saved can recover the extra embodied energy of the balcony over
the life span of the building. Net saving of energy consumption and
GHG reduction can be achieved. Only the case with north facing
balcony fails as the energy payback period is over 100 years which
is much longer than its life span.
5. Conclusion
The provision of balcony to the living room of a residential at
offers a number of merits including improved view enjoyment,
enhanced ventilation and increased planting space. In addition,
a balcony can act as an overhang and provide solar shading as
well as electricity saving of the A/C system. In this study, a typical residential at with balcony constructed at the living room was
modeled and the energy performance was investigated with the
use of the typical weather data set of a subtropical city, Hong Kong.
The effects of balconys orientation and glazing material of window
were also evaluated. It was found that for residential ats facing
various orientations (N, E, S, W, NE, SE, SW and NW) can offer sub-

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