| Title |
Rational Building Energy Assessment using Global Sensitivity Analysis |
| Authors |
Yoo, Young-Seo ; Yi, Dong-Hyuk ; Kim, Sun-Sook ; Park, Cheol-Soo |
| DOI |
https://doi.org/10.5659/JAIK_SC.2020.36.5.177 |
| Keywords |
Building Energy Performance Assessment; Sensitivity Analysis; Sobol; Performance-based; Prescriptive Approach |
| Abstract |
The building energy performance indicator, called Energy Performance Index (EPI), has been used for the past decades in South Korea. It has a list of design variables assigned with weighting factors (a, b). Unfortunately, the current EPI method is not performance-based but very close to a prescriptive rating. With this in mind, this study aims to propose a new performance-based EPI method. For this purpose, a global sensitivity analysis method, Sobol, is employed. The Sobol method is suitable for complex nonlinear models and can decompose all the output variance due to every input. The Sobol sensitivity index of each variable is defined as 0 to 1 (0 to 100%), and the sum of all sensitivity indices is equal to 1 (100%). In this study, an office building was modeled using EnergyPlus and then the Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) was conducted to generate a surrogate model to EnergyPlus. The sensitivity index was suggested to replace weight (a) in the existing EPI. In addition, the discrete weight (b) in the existing EPI was replaced by a set of continuous regression functions. Due to the introduction of the sensitivity index and the continuous regression functions, the new proposed approach can provide far more accurate outcome than the existing EPI (R2: 0.83 vs. R2: 0.01 for cooling, R2: 0.66 vs. R2: 0.01 for total energy). The new proposed approach proves to be more rational, objective and performance-based than the existing EPI method. |