IBPSA2009

Today, many building software tools for evaluating energy efficiency are available. More than three hundred are listed by the US Department of Energy. Despite the diversity of the tools and their users, they generally share the same goals: to reduce the consumption of energy and even to produce surplus energy. We were interested in comparing the information provided by five softwares programmes that are widely used in France: EnergyPlus, TrnSys, CoDyBa, Pleiades + Comfie and PHPP.

The drive to reduce UK Carbon Emissions directly associated with dwellings and to achieve a zero carbon home dictates that Renewable Energy Technologies will have an increasingly large role in the built environment.  Created by the Building Research Establishment (BRE), the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) is the UK Government’s recommended method of assessing the energy ratings of dwellings.  This paper presents an evaluation of the advantage given to SAP ratings by the domestic installation of typical Photovoltaic (PV) and Solar Domestic Hot Water (SDHW) systems in the UK.

With the increasing awareness of sustainable development in the construction industry, implementation of an energy rating procedure to assess buildings is becoming more important. The most representative building environment assessment schemes that are in use today are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) and Green Star. This paper aims to focus on the investigation of energy performance assessment for new office buildings within the LEED, BREEAM and Green Star schemes.

Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation (UVGI) systems use 254 nm UVC radiation to inactivate microorganisms in the air and on surfaces. In-duct UVGI systems are installed in air-handling units or air distribution systems to inactivate microorganisms “on the fly” and on surfaces.  The literature contains few investigations of the economic performance of UVGI. This study presents a simulation-based life-cycle cost analysis of in-duct UVGI in a hypothetical office building served by VAV systems.

In-duct ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) systems treat moving air streams in heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems to inactivate airborne microorganisms. UVGI system performance depends on air temperature, velocity, cumulative operating time, variations in exposure time and other factors. Annual simulations of UVGI efficiency and space concentration that accounted for these effects were performed for a hypothetical building served by a VAV system.

Artificial lighting contributes for a large part to the primary energy use of an office building. Lighting control systems can help reduce the lighting energy use. When calculating the potential energy savings, neglecting the occupant behaviour leads to an overestimation. This research shows that the energy saving performance of a daylight dimming system in an individual office decreases by about 10% when user behaviour is accounted for. A parameter analysis shows that this result is fairly independent of boundary conditions.

Indoor climate has a distinct influence on productivity and sick leave of employees. Rehva guidebook 6 “Indoor Climate and Productivity in Offices” (ISSO/Rehva, 2006) shows these effects. Relations from this guidebook are integrated into the post-processing module of the Dutch Building Performance Simulation program VA114. Through this integration, effects of indoor climate measures are quantified, not only as change in comfort but also as change in productivity and as change in sick leave.

With the advent of the concepts of efficient energy use   focus   has   shifted   towards   buildings   becoming  more air tight and having lower levels of ventilation. This is due to the fact that as buildings become better insulated   and   conduction   heat   loss   is   reduced   the  proportion of heating and air conditioning load due to ventilation has increased and may offer the largest scope for reducing energy demand. This may have a detrimental effect on internal air quality (IAQ) and compounds existing environmental issues such as out gassing from materials in new buildings.

This paper presents a semi-empirical steady-state model of an air-cooled water chiller. The first part of the paper shows how the model is built by associating a scroll compressor and two heat exchanger sub-models. The second part of the paper presents the parameters identification process based on published manufacturer data (for the compressor and the whole chiller models). The only encountered difficulty is the characterization of the fan control model, since information is lacking to identify its parameters.

This paper presents detailed information about testing and validation of cooling and heating coil models. The work has been carried out under Subtask D of the International Energy Agency’s SHC Task 34/ECBCS Annex 43 (Testing and Validation of Building Energy Simulation Tools). The goal of this Subtask (Mechanical Equipment and Control Strategies) was to develop and test methods that would help evaluating, diagnosing and correcting HVAC mechanical equipment simulation software.