Annual heating energy requirements of office buildings in a European climate

Abstract

The concept of implementing energy savings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has become a key element of energy policies of any industrialized country. In the civil sector and specifically, energy savings for office buildings, there are still opportunities for further enhancements related to correctly determining the air conditioning thermal requirements. However, there is a lack of simple correlations that allow a preliminary assessment for a single building or correlations that can be quickly applied at the district level. This paper proposes several simple correlations that determine the heating loads of a typical office building by only knowing the Degree-Days of a specific European location. The authors have developed a dynamic model of an office building, considering the different energy regulations in force in several European countries such that the building model is as energy-efficient as possible in each examined location. Furthermore, the standard requirements related to the employment rate, indoor ventilation and indoor gain have been included. The results from several simulations performed in the TRNSYS environment have enabled the development of mathematical relationships valid for seven European countries and three continental zones (northern, central and southern) with notably high correlation coefficients. The proposed equations can be useful for determining the heating load of non-residential buildings with an appropriate level of detail for a rough energy plan at the district level.