Impact Analysis on the Variations of the Thermo-physical Property of Building Envelopes and Occupancy in Building Energy Performance Assessment

Abstract

Understanding the impact of uncertainty in modeling the thermo-physical property of building envelopes and building occupancy on energy analysis has recently received attention. This paper evaluates the impact of the variations of the thermo-physical property of building envelopes and occupancy on building energy analysis. As the data format for accessing and updating building information for energy analysis, gbXML-based BIM is leveraged. We first studied the impact of reflecting the as-is thermo-physical properties of different building envelopes from thermographic sensing on building energy load calculation. Then, the response of energy simulation model with respect to the variations of building occupancy is explored. Finally, the impact of each variation on building energy use intensity is analyzed through the regression analysis. Several experiments were conducted on a building located in six different climatic zones in the U.S. The perceived benefits of continuous updating of energy profiles for model calibration for reliable energy analysis under uncertainty and the related open research challenges are discussed in detail.