Author_Institution :
Civil & Environ. Eng., Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Abstract :
Adjusting for occupancy, when controlling an HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) system, is an important way to realize demand-driven control and improve energy efficiency in buildings. Energy simulation is an efficient way to examine the effects of occupancy on a building´s energy consumption and a cost-effective and non-intrusive solution to test occupancy-based HVAC control strategies. However, more than one hundred building energy simulation programs are used in research and practice, and large discrepancies exist in simulated results when different simulation programs are used to model the same building under same conditions. This paper evaluates different methods and sequences of coupling occupancy information with building HVAC energy simulation. A systematic review is conducted to analyze five energy simulation programs, including DOE-2, EnergyPlus, IES-VE, ESP-r, and TRNSYS, from the following five perspectives of heat transfer and balance, load calculation, occupancy-HVAC system connection, HVAC system modeling, and HVAC system simulation process.
Keywords :
HVAC; control engineering computing; energy conservation; heat transfer; power engineering computing; DOE-2 program; EnergyPlus program; HVAC energy simulation; HVAC system modeling perspective; HVAC system simulation process perspective; IES-VE, ESP-r program; TRNSYS program; demand-driven control; energy efficiency; heat balance perspective; heat transfer perspective; heating-ventilation-air conditioning; load calculation perspective; occupancy information; occupancy-HVAC system connection perspective; occupancy-based HVAC control strategy; simulation program; Atmospheric modeling; Buildings; Energy consumption; Heat transfer; Load modeling; Space heating;
