By performing a dynamic energy simulation of a building’s energy performance we can predict the future building energetic behaviour, and make improvements, evaluating how the behaviour of the building changes.
If used properly, energy modeling can help optimize the design of the building and allow the design team to prioritize investment in strategies that have the greatest effect on the energy use of the building.
The main inputs taken into consideration when planning the simulation are:
- Location:
- Climate data
- Interior conditions
- Envelope:
- Area, orientation, solar absorptance, transmittance, etc. of all the opaque components
- Area, orientation, solar absorptance, visible light transmission, transmittance, shadow coefficient, etc. of all the transparent components
- Mass of the components
- Infiltration rate
- Internal gains:
- Lighting
- Home and electrical appliances
- Sensible and latent heat
- Hourly use schedules:
- Hourly lighting schedules
- Electric appliances hourly schedules
- Occupancy hourly schedules
- H.V.A.C. systems:
- Heating systems
- Cooling systems
- Ventilation systems
- Heat recovery systems
- DHW systems
- Renewable energy systems
Hundreds of parameters can be set when performing the simulation.
The broken down results that can be obtained from these data include detailed consumption (annual and monthly) for heating, cooling, domestic hot water, mechanical systems, lighting, etc. Consumption for heating and cooling that is assigned to each component, indicating a manner appropriate to the facades, the decks, how much to windows, how much to infiltration, etc… can be analyzed. These results lead us to look at areas where you can be get the most savings.
The software we use for the simulation is EnergyPlus, which is the international reference for energy modeling.