English

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. 

Double-skin facade (DSF) buildings are being built as an attractive, innovative and energy efficient solution. Nowadays, several design tools are used for assessment of thermal and energy performance of DSF buildings. Existing design tools are well-suited for performance assessment of conventional buildings, but their accuracy might be limited in cases with DSFs because of the complexity of the heat and mass transfer processes within the DSF.

A set of validation test cases are presented for comparing the results of mid-level detailed ground-coupled heat transfer models typically used with whole-building energy simulation software to verified detailed numerical ground-coupled heat transfer models. A new validation methodology development is also presented that uses an analytical solution for verifying detailed numerical models for overall correctness and proper application.