Comparison of typical meteorological year generation methods for building energy simulation in marine climate of China

Abstract

The unique marine climate can affect the applicability of typical meteorological year (TMY) methods, which has not been adequately discussed in previous research. Based on meteorological data of five islands of Dongsha, Xisha, Nansha, Meiji, and Yongshu in China, this study selected their respective TMY using four methods including CTYW, Danish, Festa-Ratto and Sandia. Then, the suitability of various methods in marine climate, low-latitude sea area, was evaluated through the deviation between TMY data and measured data, as well as the precision of the building energy loads. The conclusions indicate that TMY chosen through CTYW method exhibits the lowest deviations in predicting the monthly mean value of meteorological elements with an average NRMSE value of 2.98%, and the hourly value with a cumulative Filkenstein-Schafer (FS) value of 20.8. It was followed by Sandia method with NRMSE of 3.44% and FS of 21.7. Compared with the mean building energy loads calculated using long-term measured data, the result calculated based on TMY chosen through CTYW exhibits the lowest error rate, followed by Sandia method, with the average NRMSE values of 2.06% and 2.48%, respectively. In summary, the TMY chosen by CTYW has a reliable representativeness in long-term climate characterization and energy loads simulation for low-latitude sea areas of China.