English

In the Swiss research project OptiControl (www.opticontrol.ethz.ch), new predictive building control strategies are developed and applied to a fully occupied, well instrumented demonstrator building. Here we report on the development and validation of the EnergyPlus building energy performance simulation model used in the project.

Recently façade systems have integrated passive solutions to reduce the energy consumption in buildings and improve their occupants’ comfort. This paper reports the results of the thermal performance of Trombe walls and daylighting of glazing modules of a façade system in Portugal. Trombe walls are massive walls separated from the outdoors by glazing and an air space, which absorbs the solar energy and releases it selectively to the inside of the building at night. Computational simulations were carried out with the Design Builder, Ecotect and Desktop Radiance programs.

Traditional uncertainty quantification (UQ) in the design of energy efficient buildings is limited to the propagation of parameter uncertainties in model input variables.  Some models inside building simulation are inherently inaccurate, which introduces additional uncertainties in model predictions. Therefore, quantification of this type of uncertainty (i.e., modelling, or more strictly speaking model form uncertainty) is a necessary step toward the complete UQ of model predictions.

In the context of district energy systems, changes in a building’s heat demand also affect the energy efficiency of the whole district heating network. We present an integral dynamic model of a district heating network branch with three buildings. By comparing simulations of a reference case and a retrofit scenario we show that reducing the buildings’ heat demands also reduces the mass flow rate in the network branch.