Thermal-electrical analogy for dynamic urban-scale energy modeling

Abstract

The development of urban-scale energy modeling is currently the goal of many research groups as a result of to the increased interest in evaluating the impacts of energy efficiency measures in cities. These energy models are useful to explore consumption and emission distribution at district scale and to quantitatively assess renovation strategies and energy supply options. This work presents a dynamic energy modeling based on an energy-balance of residential buildings which uses urban-scale data. The model was designed to take into account the microclimate conditions and morphological urban-scale parameters. This methodology was calibrated, optimized and validated by applying it to a district in the city of Turin. In addition, a thermal-electricity analogy has been implemented in a software for scientific computation and simulation to manage big database. Therefore, a new model based on thermal-electrical analogies, which can be applied to a larger building stock, is presented. A sensitivity analysis has highlighted the different types of behavior of building considering their periods of constructions. The results of this work show that this model can also be applied at a district scale with good accuracy, especially for old buildings, to manage the existing large databases for analyses at an urban or territorial scale; for newer buildings needs to be improved.