English

Indoor climate has a distinct influence on productivity and sick leave of employees. Rehva guidebook 6 “Indoor Climate and Productivity in Offices” (ISSO/Rehva, 2006) shows these effects. Relations from this guidebook are integrated into the post-processing module of the Dutch Building Performance Simulation program VA114. Through this integration, effects of indoor climate measures are quantified, not only as change in comfort but also as change in productivity and as change in sick leave.

With the advent of the concepts of efficient energy use   focus   has   shifted   towards   buildings   becoming  more air tight and having lower levels of ventilation. This is due to the fact that as buildings become better insulated   and   conduction   heat   loss   is   reduced   the  proportion of heating and air conditioning load due to ventilation has increased and may offer the largest scope for reducing energy demand. This may have a detrimental effect on internal air quality (IAQ) and compounds existing environmental issues such as out gassing from materials in new buildings.

This paper presents a semi-empirical steady-state model of an air-cooled water chiller. The first part of the paper shows how the model is built by associating a scroll compressor and two heat exchanger sub-models. The second part of the paper presents the parameters identification process based on published manufacturer data (for the compressor and the whole chiller models). The only encountered difficulty is the characterization of the fan control model, since information is lacking to identify its parameters.

This paper presents detailed information about testing and validation of cooling and heating coil models. The work has been carried out under Subtask D of the International Energy Agency’s SHC Task 34/ECBCS Annex 43 (Testing and Validation of Building Energy Simulation Tools). The goal of this Subtask (Mechanical Equipment and Control Strategies) was to develop and test methods that would help evaluating, diagnosing and correcting HVAC mechanical equipment simulation software. 

Double-skin facade (DSF) buildings are being built as an attractive, innovative and energy efficient solution. Nowadays, several design tools are used for assessment of thermal and energy performance of DSF buildings. Existing design tools are well-suited for performance assessment of conventional buildings, but their accuracy might be limited in cases with DSFs because of the complexity of the heat and mass transfer processes within the DSF.

A set of validation test cases are presented for comparing the results of mid-level detailed ground-coupled heat transfer models typically used with whole-building energy simulation software to verified detailed numerical ground-coupled heat transfer models. A new validation methodology development is also presented that uses an analytical solution for verifying detailed numerical models for overall correctness and proper application.

This paper presents an overview of the recently completed International Energy Agency Solar Heating and Cooling Task 34 and Energy Conservation in Buildings and Community Systems Annex 43 (IEA 34/43) on Testing and Validation of Building Energy Simulation Tools. The paper includes discussion of the technical and historical context, methodology, organization, accomplishments, and adoption by standards organizations and other regulatory entities.

In this paper we describe new software “CitySim” that has been conceived to support the more sustainable planning of urban settlements. This first version focuses on simulating buildings’ energy flows, but work is also under way to model energy embodied in materials as well as the flows of water and waste and inter-relationships between these flows; likewise their dependence on the urban climate. We discuss this as well as progress that has been made to optimise urban resource flows using evolutionary algorithms. But this is only part of the picture.

Approximately 33% of total annual energy consumption and carbon emission in Belgrade (Serbia) are related to the housing sector. As such, the housing sector represents a key determinant in the development of an overall national carbon reduction strategy. The development of an effective carbon reduction strategy increasingly requires use and development of detailed predictive tools.

With very low rates of replacement of the existing somewhat dated housing stock a key challenge for nations to meet their emissions reduction targets during the coming years will be to improve the energy performance of existing buildings within their cities. In this paper we describe the preliminary form of a system dynamics model of the housing stock of the city of Basel in Switzerland and investigate how this may evolve up to the year 2050. In particular we model the renovation process of the stock, test the key parameters influencing this process (e.g.