IBPSA2013

The analysis of innovative designs that tightly inte-grate architectural and energy systems presents a chal-lenge for existing building performance simulation (BPS) tools. No single BPS tool offers sufficient ca-pabilities and the flexibility to resolve all the possi-ble design variants of interest. The development of a co-simulation between the ESP-r and TRNSYS sim-ulation tools has been accomplished to address this need by enabling an integrated simulation approach that rigorously treats both building physics and energy systems.

Design principles in Net-ZEB consider the local en-ergy infrastructure as the virtual storage. Thus a large amount of energy exchange occurs with the grid and these buildings rely heavily on the grid to reach an-nual zero balance. Wide-spread application of such buildings could soon saturate the grid hosting capacity and limits their effectiveness on larger scale. In order to design buildings that effectively interact with the grid, well-designed energy solutions are paramount.

The paper focuses on parameter estimation processes for physically meaningful models tuned online and de-fine a process to determine whether a model is rele-vant or not for GMBA-BEMS tuning purpose. The proposed approach relies on the data coming from the PREDIS/MHI platform. The first step is to cal-culate realistic parameters with possible intervals be-cause nonlinear optimization, required for physically explicit models, implies initial parameters.

The Flemish EPB calculation method, in accordance with the EU EPBD, determines an insulation label and an energy performance label as an assessment method for the theoretical energy performance of buildings. By monitoring 70 recently built dwellings, this research aims to check the extent to which these labels correspond to the real energy performance of standard up to energy neutral dwellings. Results show that the labels correspond reasonably, meaning that dwellings with a better label generally effectively have lower energy consumption.

Air quality monitoring as well as comfort or overall energy performance require accurate information on airflow patterns, while they are particularly difficult to assess in existing buildings. We present an innova-tive instrumentation system using gas tracers, based on the combined use of several highly sensitive emerging micro-gas chromatographs (µGC) as pollutant sensors and an identification method for data processing.

During the last years, the modeling language Modelica became increasingly used in building performance simulation. Several Modelica libraries for building components and HVAC equipment exist and many research groups use the language. This paper provides an overview about the application of Modelica. This includes modeling on different scales (e.g., urban scale, building envelope, HVAC system) and for different applications (e.g., conceptual building design, building operation).