Sensitivity Analysis and emperical Validation of Hlite Using Data from the Nist Indoor Test Cell

Over the past seven years, Ross & Baruzzini, Inc., (R&B) has been working on a project to determine the relationship of the air conditioning load caused by building lighting with time. This effort has been funded by the Electric Power Research Institute. An initial literature search determined that the basis of existing calculation methods was data generated by Mitalas in the 1970's for a very limited set of experiments. R&B then embarked on an experimental program with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, formerly National Bureau of Standards, NBS) to more fully investigate variables which might affect the load versus time relationship in present-day buildings. NIST has been funded by the Department of Energy (DoE) for their portion of this effort. The experimental program included the construction and monitoring of a full scale indoor test cell representative of a typical interior office space. The program also included the creation of a dynamic thermal model to serve as a researcher's tool to allow the numerical simulation of the full-scale test cell. This paper concentrates on the computer model created at NIST, called HLITE (Heat of Lights). This paper describes the techniques used to empirically evaluate HLITE. Presented from this experimental program are the measured data obtained from the full-scale test cell compared with the results of the HLITE program. The objective is to present the interpretations of these comparisons and to allow other modelers to understand the significance of various parameters within the model.