Comparison of energy simulations for a residential unit: A rapid method for an integrated decision tool

Abstract

This work defines a methodology aimed at the creation of a simplified energy model able to simulate a residential building with a reasonable workload. The simulation results should have a sufficient accuracy at any stage of a building design, by exploiting the benefits of a modular approach with increasing detail rendition. The idea is to verify the accuracy of the simulations comparing different methodologies, from stationary simulations, using a Italian software called TERMUS, to more sophisticated, even if standard, dynamic simulations, using TRNSYS. Such comparisons have already been carried out in the past in different papers, but a thorough analysis of the envelope-plant system using progressive simplification steps has not yet been done, especially for a residential test case in an on-going retrofit process. The results indicate that with the proper simplification steps, shown in the analysis, the accuracy in terms of energy needs and power curves is very high (the difference with the most complete analysis is always below 12 for all the output parameters) with a workload of a few hours for the preparation of the model and the simulations. The fact of having considered a case in northern Italy does not limit the universality of the procedure, which may be applied for a very large number of built environments in residential areas. © 2015 by Bozen-Bolzano University Press Free University of Bozen-Bolzano All rights reserved.