Simplified methods to evaluate energy use for space cooling in the energy certification

Both on European and national scale, standards are now being drawn to extend to summer airconditioning the evaluation of energy requirement in building-plant systems. To this aimdifferent simplified methods have been taken into account, anyway all similar to theutilization factor method already used for the winter season.The results obtained by the application of these methods in the case of typical buildings aretherefore compared here with those from a dynamic simulation of building-plant system bymeans of comprehensive computer programs like Energy-Plus. The analysis points out thepossibilities but also the limits of these simplified methods.