Sensible cooling load

The sensible cooling load is a measurement of the amount of energy that must be removed from, for example, the air inside a building, in order to maintain a certain temperature, regardless of the temperature outside. Cooling load must be taken into account when calculating the capacity of a cooling system.

Sensible cooling load refers to ‘dry bulb temperature’, i.e. a cooling system must be capable of cooling the air in a building, for example, to a required temperature, while taking external factors into account.

Factors that influence the amount of energy required to cool the air within a building include:

• Glass windows and doors with solar radiation
• Hours of sunshine
• Number of people in the building
• Electric lights that radiate heat
• Heat-radiating equipment, e.g. computers