Energy simulation in existing buildings: Calibrating the model for retrofit studies.

摘要

Buildings in United States are responsible for close to half of the total energy consumed in the country, with existing building stock as the main responsible factor. While just a small proportion of that energy is consumed during the extraction of raw materials and construction phases, the majority of that energy is used for ongoing building operations after construction is complete (EIA, 2011). New technologies and management methods of building energy conservation have greatly decreased energy consumption in new buildings.;Compared with new constructions, energy performance of a large amount of existing buildings is poor. There are many methods of upgrading these buildings to achieve lower energy consumption, including upgrading building mechanical systems, using high quality windows and doors, adding extra insulate layers, etc., could be done in order to avoid energy wasting and decrease operation price. However, not all these methods may be very effective if one does not know how the building is currently performing at a more detailed level than just looking at energy bills. It is very useful perform energy simulations as part of a well-managed process of improving performance of an existing building. As a result, calibration of an energy model to the existing building's actual performance is considered as one of the best important steps in whole retrofit process.;In order to get an accurate simulation result, proper building information collection and simplification are needed for simulation. However, different software, even when used by a careful, knowledgeable person, may have different results even with similar input. Compared to the real world situation, simplifications of energy models are unavoidable. Therefore, there are always differences between simulation results and real energy consumption. Yet, the first step in predicting future savings is to create a calibrated model that can then be used for energy simulation before the retrofit happens.;KAP on the USC campus was used as a case study for developing the process of creating a calibrated energy models that could be used for future upgrades to the building General steps for calibration and energy simulation were also developed and discussed in this thesis. A set of guidelines has been developed as a result of the calibration study.