Model Simplification on Energy and Comfort Simulation Analysis for Residential Building Design in Hot and Arid Climate

Sara Elhadad,Chro Hama Radha,János Gyergyák,Bálint Baranyai,István Kistelegdi

doi:10.3390/en13081876

Sara Elhadad, Chro Hama Radha + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/en13081876

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Abstract

Accurate building physics performance analysis requires time-consuming, detailed modeling, and calculation time requirement. This paper evaluates the impact of model simplifications on thermal and visual comfort as well as energy performance. In the framework of dynamic zonal thermal simulation, a case study of a residential building in hot climate is investigated. A detailed model is created and simplified through four scenarios, by incrementally reducing the number of thermal zones from modeling every space as a separate zone to modeling the building as a single zone. The differences of total energy and comfort performance in the detailed and simplified models are analyzed to evaluate the grade of the simplifications’ accuracy. The results indicate that all simplification scenarios present a marginal average deviation in total energy demand and thermal comfort by less than 20%. Combining rooms with similar thermal features into a zone presents the optimal scenario, while the worst scenario is the single-zone model. Results showed that thermal zone merging as a simulation simplification method has its limitations as well, whereas a too intensive simplification can lead to undesired error rates. The method is well applicable in further early-stage design and development tasks, specifically in large-scale projects.

Highlights

High consumption of energy is unavoidable at a global scale [1,2,3,4,5,6]
In base scenario (BS) scenario, the cooling demand accounts to 67% of the total energy consumption, while the heating demand attributes to 18%, as the case study located in a hot and dry climate
Buildings are attributed to a tremendous amount of energy consumption due to their continuous operation and extensive lifetime

Summary

Introduction

High consumption of energy is unavoidable at a global scale [1,2,3,4,5,6]. It measures the economic success of a given country. The operation of residential and commercial buildings attributes one third of the world’s energy consumption [7]. There is great potential for decreasing global energy consumption through improving the building design [8]. Based on the U.S Department of Energy report, buildings are attributed to the Energies 2020, 13, 1876; doi:10.3390/en13081876 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies

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