Building energy consumption and peak load reduction potential of mixed-use community through urban building energy modeling

Abstract

Global energy issues are receiving more attention, and conducting energy consumption simulations is an effective way to understand the intensity of energy consumption in cities. In this paper, a group of buildings in Shenzhen, China, was selected for the study, and 1049 buildings in the area were modeled to analyze their energy consumption characteristics. Geographic information system (GIS) was used to obtain the building vector data, building type and vintage needed to perform the modeling. AutoBPS, an energy modeling tool can quickly and automatically model buildings based on the dataset. This paper uses this tool to help generate building models with specific parameters regarding the building standards issued in China. EnergyPlus simulated the energy consumption of the obtained building model and analyzed the results. The results show that the difference in peak loads decreases with later vintage. Strengthening energy management in public buildings may be an important part of reducing energy consumption. The ratio of the minimum month of energy consumption to the maximum for high-rise residential buildings is 0.2703, and for four types of buildings, this ratio is 0.3147. The difference between peak and valley monthly energy consumption in mixed communities is reduced.