Estimating thermal parameters of a commercial building: A meta-heuristic approach

Abstract

The present study proposes a novel methodology based on a meta-heuristic algorithm to accurately estimate the thermal parameters of a building. These parameters are often most difficult to be quantified in practice as these are strictly determined by the characteristics of the materials used in building construction, which vary significantly from one building structure/type to another. The parameter estimation problem is formulated as a single-objective optimization problem and the thermal model of the building has been developed in EnergyPlusTM, following black-box identification strategy. Performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated considering both practical and simulated energy consumption data of the building, after subjecting the thermal model to two different geographical environments of New Zealand, with significant weather profile variations. The results of the investigation illustrate that the proposed methodology could effectively estimate the building thermal parameters. This approach, therefore, will facilitate in developing efficient Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS).