English

Two globally applicable energy indices, Climate Energy Index (CEI) and Building Energy Index (BEI) were developed as a means of quantifying the climate impact on building energy performance and distinguishing climate related and climate unrelated energy end uses. It provides a common basis for comparisons of building energy performance and different design strategies in a simple and independent fashion. The paper describes the derivation of the indices calculation methods and presents case study results based on two types of building models.

This paper reports a recent longitudinal study observing people’s use of windows in cellular office spaces and suggests that the thermal environmental parameters are not the only factors affecting people’s behaviour. The study focuses on the ‘end-of-day’ window position due to its influence on the next day’s thermal performance of buildings and energy use during the unoccupied night-time period when occupants’ comfort is not important.

In this research, a new energy-­saving design method and a design-­aided program  MEESG  (Most-­Energy-­Efficient-­Scheme-­Generator)  are  developed.  The program aims to aid energy-­saving design by means of  optimization  algorithms  at  a  very  early  design  stage,  when  the  building  shape  is  not  even determined  by  the  architects.  In  this  program,  a  simplified  prediction  model  BEFPM  (Building Energy  Demand  Fast  Prediction  Model)  is  established  to  simulate  the  building  total  energy demand  very  quickly.

This paper proposes an approach to identify the coefficients of the chiller model used by the EnergyPlus program. Data collected every 15 minutes from an existing cooling plant are used to evaluate the approach.

Building energy systems often consume 20% more energy than is necessary due to system deviation from the design intent. Identifying the root causes of energy waste in buildings can be challenging largely because energy flows are generally invisible. To help address this challenge, we present a model-based, whole building energy diagnostics and performance monitoring system.

This study proposed the Tikhonov regularization strategy coupled with the least-squares optimization to identify unsteady gas release processes from a fixed spot. The Tikhonov regularization adds a regularized term to the optimizing objective function and imposes a bound to solution. To accelerate the solving procedure, the unsteady gas concentration is calculated as the convolution integral between the concentration response by a unit impulse release and the arbitrary unsteady release.

This paper describes the basic features of a new advanced human thermal model (HTM), which is integrated with a building simulation tool. The thermal sensation calculation of the model has been validated using dynamical temperature step change test results. This new methodology seems promising, and significance of both internal (metabolic rate and clothing) and external (air and surface temperature levels, air velocity, and humidity) boundary conditions can be estimated. This is beneficial, for example, when evaluating new technical concepts for future energy-efficient buildings. 

This paper presents the evaluation of energy and exergy performance of several design alternatives of residential heating systems for a house. All component-based models, written and solved in the Engineering Equation Solver (EES) program, are assembled in several design alternatives for the heating, ventilation and domestic hot water (HEAT-DHW) systems. An energy-efficient house in Montreal is used as a case study.

This paper reports on research that uses building performance simulation and uncertainty analysis to assess the risks that projected climate change poses to the thermal performance of buildings, and to their critical functions. The work takes meteorological climate change predictions as a starting point, but also takes into account developments and uncertainties in technology, occupancy, intervention and renovation, and others.

Advanced control systems are widely applied in modern buildings so as to meet the requirements of energy conservation and higher level of indoor environmental quality. The building control strategies need to be assessed and verified before applying to buildings, by either experiments or simulation. Verification by simulation can saves time and labour. However, there is no single building performance simulation tool that offers sufficient capabilities and flexibilities to accommodate the ever increasing complexity and rapid innovations in control systems and technologies.