A modelling approach to reduce the simulation time of building stock models

Abstract

Modelling of heating and cooling demand of the building stock is valuable for estimating the sizing of HVAC technologies. However, designer faces oversizing problems as they rely on their experiences or the use of single zone simulations. Multizone building stock models that take into consideration the interaction between the different zones' profiles, and building envelope properties to obtain reliable estimations is needed. Simulations of large amount of building stock models require extensive computation and simulation time. Therefore, we developed multi-zone generic modelling approach that allows modelling and simulation of large population of building stock cases in shorter time. The approach relies on splitting the building into modules that are modelled separately and of which the simulation results are aggregated afterwards. This paper investigates the strengths and limitations of the proposed approach on a selected case-study building by comparing it to classical modelling approaches. A reduction of 80% in simulation time was achieved. The hourly heating and cooling demands for the proposed and classical approaches reached a lowest deviation of 1.4% for buildings with higher U-values, and one set temperature.