Title: Demonstration of reduced-order urban scale building energy models

Abstract

The aim of this study is to demonstrate a developed framework to rapidly create urban scale reduced-order building energy models using a systematic summary of the simplifications required for the representation of building exterior and thermal zones. These urban scale reduced-order models rely on the contribution of influential variables to the internal, external, and system thermal loads. OpenStudio Application Programming Interface (API) serves as a tool to automate the process of model creation and demonstrate the developed framework. The results of this study show that the accuracy of the developed reduced-order building energy models varies only up to 10% with the selection of different thermal zones. In addition, to assess complexity of the developed reduced-order building energy models, this study develops a novel framework to quantify complexity of the building energy models. Consequently, this study empowers the building energy modelers to quantify their building energy model systematically in order to report the model complexity alongside the building energy model accuracy. An exhaustive analysis on four university campuses suggests that the urban neighborhood buildings lend themselves to simplified typical shapes. Specifically, building energy modelers can utilize the developed typical shapes to represent more than 80% of the U.S. buildings documented inmore » the CBECS database. One main benefits of this developed framework is the opportunity for different models including airflow and solar radiation models to share the same exterior representation, allowing a unifying exchange data. Altogether, the results of this study have implications for a large-scale modeling of buildings in support of urban energy consumption analyses or assessment of a large number of alternative solutions in support of retrofit decision-making in the building industry.« less

Authors:

Heidarinejad, Mohammad ^[1]; Mattise, Nicholas ^[1]; Dahlhausen, Matthew ^[1]; Sharma, Krishang ^[1]; Benne, Kyle S. ^[2]; Macumber, Daniel L. ^[2]; Brackney, Larry J. ^[2]; Srebric, Jelena ^[1]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
2. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

Publication Date:

Fri Sep 08 00:00:00 EDT 2017

Research Org.:

National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)

OSTI Identifier:

1395098

Alternate Identifier(s):

OSTI ID: 1549929

Report Number(s):

NREL/JA-5500-70142
Journal ID: ISSN 0378-7788

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC36-08GO28308; EE0004261

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Energy and Buildings

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Volume: 156; Journal Issue: C; Journal ID: ISSN 0378-7788

Publisher:

Elsevier

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION; building energy model; reduced-order model; calibration; OpenStudio; typical building shapes