Development of space heating hourly profiles for community based heating systems in Nova Scotia

摘要

On-site production of heating has been common in Canada because of the historical abundance of cheap energy sources. However, energy prices are increasing rapidly. As a result, there has been a growing focus on energy efficient technologies, like district energy systems. Additionally, district energy systems have other benefits such as controlled emissions and fuel flexibility.However, district energy system planning and implementation processes, are very complicated. Even preliminary studies require knowledge of peak and average annual heating energy demands as well as demand profiles of all the buildings under consideration. Building simulation programs can prove to be an invaluable tool for estimating the building heating energy profiles.Determining the heating profiles of different model houses, using the hourly building simulation program ENERPASS, was the focus of this study. Fifteen model houses based on number of storeys and vintage of houses in rural Nova Scotian communities were designed using the data from the 1993 Survey of Household Energy Use (SHEU) and 1994 New Housing Survey (NHS) databases. ENERPASS estimated the house design heating loads, and peak and annual heating demands for the model houses. To validate the ENERPASS estimations, the annual average heating demands were verified with other similar studies.