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Abstract
The potential of ambient thermal sources, including ambient air at dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures, ground and night sky radiant temperatures, to serve building cooling loads was evaluated from TMY3 weather data for US climates. Three different cases were considered: (1) annual potentials, disregarding thermal storage, (2) diurnal storage and (3) storage capacity necessary to serve the entire annual load. This capacity was determined by identifying the largest load occurring during spans of time without ambient cooling potential. The sky had cooling potential every night in all 11 American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) climate sub-zones in the continental USA, while ground temperature had continuous cooling potential for all but the southernmost locations. Additionally, the thermal storage required to meet the entire annual cooling load with night sky radiation was quite feasible for a building with low overall envelope losses.