Full-scale experimental validation of a building thermal model in the CLIM2000 simulation software.

Within the framework of full-scale experimental validation of the global building energy simulation software programme CLIM2000 developed by Electricity Applications in Residential and Commercial Buildings Branch of Electricite De France (EDF is the French utility company) Research and Development Division, an experimentation has been carried out in a 100 m2 real house from Oct 95 to May 96. The first step was to predict in « blind way » the total electrical power consumption of the house on the basis of three different meteorological situations (cold, hot and medium). The second step was to compare the simulated results with the experimental results and to see if the prediction is in a good agreement with the real conditions. The final step was to identify the sources of the different discrepancies by using an error analysis method. This validation exercise has showed that simulated results and experimental results are in a good agreement (error,,.5%). Nevertheless, the error analysis shows that the major accuracy gains can be expected from improvements of the modelling solar gams.