Recently, a closed-type plant factory has been receiving attention as a advanced agricultural method. It has diverse advantages such as climate-independence, high productivity and stable year-round production. However, high energy cost caused by environmental control system is considered as a challenges of a closed-type plant factory. In order to reduce the energy cost, investigation about energy load which is directly connected to energy consumption needs to be conducted. In this study, energy load changes of a plant factory have been analytically analyzed according to the environmental changes. The target plant factory was a lettuce growing container farm. Firstly, the impact of photoperiod, set temperature and relative humidity change were examined. Under the climate condition of Daejeon in South Korea, increase of photoperiod and set temperature rose a yearly energy demand of a container farm. However, increase of set relative humidity decreased a yearly energy demand. Secondly, the climate environment effect was compared by investigating the energy demand under 9 different climate conditions. As a result, the difference between maximum and minimum value of the yearly energy demand showed 21.7%. Lastly, sensitivity analysis of each parameter (photoperiod, set temperature and relative humidity) has been suggested under 3 different climate conditions. The ratio of heating and cooling demand was varied depending on the climate, so the effect of each parameter became different.

The annual energy demand of the standard rural house models Nongrim-10-26 -ga was analyzed using the DesignBuilder. Size of window and type of window were selected as simulation parameters. As a result, heating energy demand was 8.3 times higher than cooling energy demand and reducing heating energy demand is important factor in reducing total building energy. When increasing window glazing size, internal heat gain and loss was changed depending on the outdoor weather conditions. Cooling energy demand increases in summer and heating energy demand increases in winter. When the type of window was changed, cooling energy demand was decreased as the SHGC value was decreased. However, heating energy demand was changed depending on both of the SHGC value and U-value of the selected window type.