CHARACTERIZING THE EFFECTS OF WEATHER ON COMMERCIAL BUILDING ENERGY USE

摘要

Energy service companies, whose returns are a function of energy savings, have developed energynormalization methods, based on degree-day measures of weather variation. True tests to determine the adequacy of these methods, however, require careful control of other determinants of building energy use. This paper uses a building energy simulation model to evaluate one of these methods for a large office building in Madison, WI using twelve years of actual weather data.rnTechniques for accounting for the effects of weather on building energy use based on degree-days are reviewed. A three parameter model, consisting of an intercept, slope, and variable base temperature degree-day terms, is evaluated with simulations. Parameter estimates energy use were found to be sensitive to the year of data selected to develop the parameter. The resulting annual estimates of energy use tended to exceed DOE-2 predictions by up to ten percent.