An analysis and diagnosis method for the energy consumption in existing residential buildings on municipal level

Municipalities, energy suppliers and building corporations in the Netherlands and beyond show a growing interest in energy management on municipal level. This is stimulated by the government, requiring the formulation and implementation of a policy of energy reduction. This not only affects the energy used in municipal buildings, but in all buildings on the territory of the municipality, including industry and residential buildings. In order to come up with a plan for energy reduction, an analysis of the energy use on the municipal level has to be performed. Municipalities and energy suppliers have a lot of data available on the energy consumption, but lack the tools to structure and analyse these data. This paper describes an approach for an energy analysis tool, offering more insight in the energy use of several energy target groups. One energy target group, the residential buildings, is focused on, since this group normally is responsible for the largest energy consumption in the municipality, and therefore has a high saving potential. As a first approach, the annual energy consumption for the households in a few Dutch cities is analysed by finding relationships between the energy consumption and several additional facts about the buildings (like building type and year of building) and its inhabitants (like the number and the age). In this way, subgroups can be defined, in which all households have the same input parameters. Based on the average energy use and the spreading around this average in the subgroup, individual households can be classified as being a good representa-tive of the subgroup or as being a high-end user. After the analysis, a good insight can be obtained in what parameters are useful for creating energy target groups. This enables us to produce a method for the analysis of general energy consumption rates. This method will be integrated in a software package for the analysis and diagnosis of the energy use of residential buildings on a municipal level.