An innovative, hierarchical energy performance data visualization for facilitating recognition of thermal issues

Abstract

This paper discusses the characteristics of and relationships between the most common building energy performance tools for simulating and visualising the thermal behaviour of buildings at the early stage of building design. The necessity for the latter and the importance of using relevant tools in practice are discussed. By highlighting existing gaps in these tools, a complementary component has been suggested that could assist building scientists in evaluating energy simulation results. The proposed energy performance data visualisation (EPDV) component is an under-development plugin (SlowLoris) that is intended to be added to the existing Grasshopper add-ons. This EPDV component provides users with simultaneous but different visualisation styles of monthly energy reports for individual floors and thermal zones. As an example, this paper uses a 2-storey building model to show the applicability of the plugin to analysis of energy simulation results.