English

The purpose of this study is to assess the capabilities of a thermal model to represent actual building energy consumption when trying to best fit the input data of the model to the actual data of the building in operation. The approach has been applied to a building for which many factors affecting energy use have been monitored for a whole year. Beyond detailed inspection and advanced investigation have been carried on to assess some uncertain parameters.

The discovery of a novel non-rod, non-cone photore-ceptor in the human eye that mediates a number of effects on the brain has sparked a growing interest in incorporating these non-visual effects of light into the design process of buildings. Appropriately–timed light exposure has the potential to stabilize and im-prove circadian rhythms, including sleep, and has di-rect stimulating effects on alertness and performance.

A bottom-up approach is developed for the specification of operational data with a high space-time resolution, to be used as inputs in multi-zone residential building models. These archetype models will be used to analyse demand modulation of total domestic electricity consumption, thus requiring a detailed knowledge of domestic loads. The approach is based on national Time-Use Survey (TUS) resident activity data. To illustrate the approach, the EnergyPlus simulation platform is used to model a multi-zone case study building.

In this paper, two different forms of the non-linear PDE-system for heat and mass transfer in porous materials and their implementation with COMSOL Multiphysics are considered. The φ-based form presents the relative humidity as system variable and leads in general to non-conservative solutions.

Being highly insulated, low energy buildings are very sensitive to variable solar and internal gains. In this context, thermal mass is useful in storing surplus energy, reducing temperature variations and improving thermal comfort. Thus, conduction modelling is fundamental, but not sufficient: appropriate superficial heat transfer modelling is also needed. Therefore, several common simplifying assumptions have been investigated and adapted to the case of high performance buildings.

This study reports the application of a stochastic simulation model that estimates community-scale residential electricity demand and photovoltaic (PV) generation to simulate the voltage of medium- and low-voltage distribution networks. This model enables the evaluation of the impact of PV diffusion and energy management technologies using, for example, battery and electric vehicles, on voltage management.

The occupant behavior related to window and air conditioner operation has a large influence on the cooling energy consumption. The occupant behavior model developed in a previous work has been modified on the basis of the results of a survey conducted in 2012 to simulate the variety of occupant behaviors regarding the preferred temperature set point for cooling. The reduction in cooling energy consumption achieved upon changing the temperature set point of an air conditioner could be estimated by applying the modified model.

In order to handle a case of pollutant dispersion in an urban environment Computational Fluid Dynam-ics (CFD) emerges as a fast and flexible method. By coupling it to a parametric optimization approach, the present study aims at simulating the photocatalytic de-struction of NOx particles as they hit the coated walls of an isolated building. This approach permits to eval-uate the impact of different design parameters as the wind speed and the sun exposure on the air quality. The first and critical step of the study presented in this article is to verify the CFD model.

The aim of this study is to check the accuracy of a nodal model to predict correctly the flow fields involved inside a building by wind-induced pressure. The model is confronted to experimental tests involving a four-storey dwelling at a reduced scale of 1/20 placed in a wind tunnel facility. Different configurations are tested considering openings of different sizes for outside openings as well as for internal doors and the presence or not of a collective duct connecting the kitchens to the outside at roof level. For each configuration, various wind incidences are studied.

The indoor thermal comfort and energy efficiency are the main design criteria for modern home energy systems (HES). In this work, simulation assisted development process of the home energy management system (HEMS) in a typical single-family house (SFH), equipped with a heat pump (HP) system, is depicted. By using the Software-in-the-Loop (SiL) approach, the controller is configured and optimized in connection with numerical simulation models, which are developed in Modelica language.