| Title |
Issues and Limitations on the Use of a Whole Building Simulation Tool for Energy Diagnosis of a Real-life Building |
| Authors |
Suh, Won-Jun ; ParkCheol-Soo |
| Keywords |
Building Energy Simulation ; Energy Diagnosis ; EnergyPlus ; DesignBuilder |
| Abstract |
This paper reports difficulties and issues to develop a whole building simulation model for energy diagnosis of a campus library building. This work was initiated to assess energy performance of the real-life building in collaboration with the campus facility management department. In the paper, the following are reported: 1) issues in data gathering: building, occupants, operation schedules, energy metering, 2) development and calibration of an energy simulation model, 3) comparison of the simulation results with measurements. In data gathering, even though many relevant information (drawings, documents, specifications, records of building operation, energy bills) were provided by the facility managers, the authors faced many problems to find accurate information for simulation runs. In this section, what issues and difficulties exist and how to deal with those (e.g., treatment of missing and uncertain data) are addressed. Secondly, the issues in the process of developing a building energy simulation model are discussed, such as how to zone the real-complex atypical building (7 storey with a vertical atrium in the center), how to model 2 chillers, 13 AHUs serving different zones, how to convert local weather data for EnergyPlus weather data format, etc. Lastly, the simulation results are compared with the measured energy use. With this comparison, it is discussed the difference between simulation prediction and measurement, what parameters cause uncertainty in simulation prediction, how to minimize the uncertainty by inspecting the process of real-life project. |