scholarly journals Building energy use compilation and analysis (BECA). Part B: Retrofit of existing North American residential buildings

1983 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard W. Wall ◽  
Charles A. Goldman ◽  
Arthur H. Rosenfeld ◽  
Gautam S. Dutt
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 1595
Author(s):  
Valeria Todeschi ◽  
Roberto Boghetti ◽  
Jérôme H. Kämpf ◽  
Guglielmina Mutani

Building energy-use models and tools can simulate and represent the distribution of energy consumption of buildings located in an urban area. The aim of these models is to simulate the energy performance of buildings at multiple temporal and spatial scales, taking into account both the building shape and the surrounding urban context. This paper investigates existing models by simulating the hourly space heating consumption of residential buildings in an urban environment. Existing bottom-up urban-energy models were applied to the city of Fribourg in order to evaluate the accuracy and flexibility of energy simulations. Two common energy-use models—a machine learning model and a GIS-based engineering model—were compared and evaluated against anonymized monitoring data. The study shows that the simulations were quite precise with an annual mean absolute percentage error of 12.8 and 19.3% for the machine learning and the GIS-based engineering model, respectively, on residential buildings built in different periods of construction. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis using the Morris method was carried out on the GIS-based engineering model in order to assess the impact of input variables on space heating consumption and to identify possible optimization opportunities of the existing model.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6753
Author(s):  
Moiz Masood Syed ◽  
Gregory M. Morrison

As the population of urban areas continues to grow, and construction of multi-unit developments surges in response, building energy use demand has increased accordingly and solutions are needed to offset electricity used from the grid. Renewable energy systems in the form of microgrids, and grid-connected solar PV-storage are considered primary solutions for powering residential developments. The primary objectives for commissioning such systems include significant electricity cost reductions and carbon emissions abatement. Despite the proliferation of renewables, the uptake of solar and battery storage systems in communities and multi-residential buildings are less researched in the literature, and many uncertainties remain in terms of providing an optimal solution. This literature review uses the rapid review technique, an industry and societal issue-based version of the systematic literature review, to identify the case for microgrids for multi-residential buildings and communities. The study describes the rapid review methodology in detail and discusses and examines the configurations and methodologies for microgrids.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Paige ◽  
Philip Agee ◽  
Farrokh Jazizadeh

AbstractThe behaviors of building occupants have continued to perplex scholars for years in our attempts to develop models for energy efficient housing. Building simulations, project delivery approaches, policies, and more have fell short of their optimistic goals due to the complexity of human behavior. As a part of a multiphase longitudinal affordable housing study, this dataset represents energy and occupant behavior attributes for 6 affordable housing units over nine months in Virginia, USA which are not performing to the net-zero energy standard they were designed for. This dataset provides researchers the ability to analyze the following variables: energy performance, occupant behaviors, energy literacy, and ecological perceptions. Energy data is provided at a 1 Hz sampling rate for four circuits: main, hot water heater, dryer, and HVAC. Building specifications, occupancy, weather data, and neighboring building energy use data are provided to add depth to the dataset. This dataset can be used to update building energy use models, predictive maintenance, policy frameworks, construction risk models, economic models, and more.


1981 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.H. Rosenfeld ◽  
W.G. Colborne ◽  
C.D. Hollowell ◽  
S.P. Meyers ◽  
L.J. Schipper ◽  
...  

Biomimetics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Negin Imani ◽  
Brenda Vale

The initial aim of the research was to develop a framework that would enable architects to look for thermoregulation methods in nature as inspiration for designing energy efficient buildings. The thermo-bio-architectural framework (ThBA) assumes designers will start with a thermal challenge in a building and then look in a systematic way for how this same issue is solved in nature. The tool is thus a contribution to architectural biomimicry in the field of building energy use. Since the ThBA was created by an architect, it was essential that the biology side of this cross-disciplinary tool was validated by experts in biology. This article describes the focus group that was conducted to assess the quality, inclusiveness, and applicability of the framework and why a focus group was selected over other possible methods such as surveys or interviews. The article first provides a brief explanation of the development of the ThBA. Given the focus here is on its validation, the qualitative data collection procedures and analysis results produced by NVivo 12 plus through thematic coding are described in detail. The results showed the ThBA was effective in bridging the two fields based on the existing thermal challenges in buildings, and was comprehensive in terms of generalising biological thermal adaptation strategies.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 4046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sooyoun Cho ◽  
Jeehang Lee ◽  
Jumi Baek ◽  
Gi-Seok Kim ◽  
Seung-Bok Leigh

Although the latest energy-efficient buildings use a large number of sensors and measuring instruments to predict consumption more accurately, it is generally not possible to identify which data are the most valuable or key for analysis among the tens of thousands of data points. This study selected the electric energy as a subset of total building energy consumption because it accounts for more than 65% of the total building energy consumption, and identified the variables that contribute to electric energy use. However, this study aimed to confirm data from a building using clustering in machine learning, instead of a calculation method from engineering simulation, to examine the variables that were identified and determine whether these variables had a strong correlation with energy consumption. Three different methods confirmed that the major variables related to electric energy consumption were significant. This research has significance because it was able to identify the factors in electric energy, accounting for more than half of the total building energy consumption, that had a major effect on energy consumption and revealed that these key variables alone, not the default values of many different items in simulation analysis, can ensure the reliable prediction of energy consumption.


Author(s):  
George A. Mertz ◽  
Gregory S. Raffio ◽  
Kelly Kissock

Environmental and resource limitations provide increased motivation for design of net-zero energy or net-zero CO2 buildings. The optimum building design will have the lowest lifecycle cost. This paper describes a method of performing and comparing lifecycle costs for standard, CO2-neutral and net-zero energy buildings. Costs of source energy are calculated based on the cost of photovoltaic systems, tradable renewable certificates, CO2 credits and conventional energy. Building energy simulation is used to determine building energy use. A case study is conducted on a proposed net-zero energy house. The paper identifies the least-cost net-zero energy house, the least-cost CO2 neutral house, and the overall least-cost house. The methodology can be generalized to different climates and buildings. The method and results may be of interest to builders, developers, city planners, or organizations managing multiple buildings.


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