The California Commercial End Use Survey (CEUS) project is being conducted for the California Energy Commission (CEC) by Itron, Inc. with support from KEMA-Xenergy, ADM Associates, and James J. Hirsch & Associates. The project is a massive effort designed to gain a detailed knowledge of end-use energy in commercial buildings in California.
This paper presents the results of a field study of manual control of windows which has been carried out in 21 individual offices within the Fraunhofer Institute’s building in Freiburg, Germany, from July 2002 to July 2003. Window status, occupancy, room and outdoor climatic conditions were measured every minute. Previous research findings are validated and extended by the results of this field study. The analysis of user behaviour reveals a strong correlation between the percentage of open windows and the time of year, outdoor temperature and building occupancy patterns.
Matlab/Simulink is known in a large number of fields as a powerful and modern simulation tool. In the field of building and HVAC simulation its use is also increasing. However, it is still believed to be a tool for small applications due to its graphical structure and not to fit well for the simulation of multizone buildings. This paper presents the development of a new multizone building model for Matlab/Simulink environment, implemented into the SIMBAD Building and HVAC Toolbox. It’s general enough to model a variety of useful cases.
The European Energy Performance in Building Directive (EPBD) requires methods for the calculation of the energy performance for use in the context of building regulations.
The paper describes the rationale behind the development of a simple monthly method for the calculation of the energy needs for heating and cooling of buildings, and positions this method in the field of different possible calculation approaches.
This paper presents an in-situ calibrated model-based approach to treat natural ventilation as an integral element of the operation of the buildings' thermal systems. Specifically, the potential of statistically based and numeric air flow models is explored as part of a hybrid building controls scheme. Toward this end, two case studies are described. In one case, the underlying predictive model is based on the statistical treatment of data obtained from a set of insitu measurements in a typical office space.
The paper presents a new approach for analyzing mold growth risk in buildings, based on a mixed simulation approach with consideration of uncertainties in relevant building parameters. The approach is capable to predict and explain unexpected mold growth occurrences that would typically not show up in standard deterministic simulation.
Validation and verification of building simulation programs and load calculation programs is of continuing interest. Dynamic thermal behavior data, including conduction transfer function (CTF) coefficients, thermal response factors and periodic response factors, are used to calculate transient heat conduction through building constructions. Computational inaccuracy sometimes occurs in calculating CTF coefficients and response factors. In this paper, a method for verification of the CTF coefficients and response factors over the whole frequency range is introduced.
A new hygrothermal building model is being developed within the research project GENSIM by the Fraunhofer institutes FIRST and IBP. The model implementation takes place by using the objectoriented modeling language Modelica. As a starting point for the development of the new building model, the researchers used the physical models of the simulation tools WUFI (hygrothermal wall simulation) and SMILE (thermal building simulation).
Tile coated wood fired appliances are designed to store heat from the intermittently burning fire in their massive structure and release it slowly to the room. The design of these systems should assure thermal comfort during the whole process and involves dynamic simulation. A customized design tool for these systems was developed. A model of the appliance was created and implemented in existing building simulation software. It was validated and tuned against laboratory measurements. It can be used in the context of a multi zone building including aspects like inter zone air flows.
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