Friendly simulation of residential heating systems.

Until now, the choice of a heating system is, in most cases, rather intuitive, but not based on significant comparisons among the many options available on the market. Friendly calculation tools are badly needed. A prototype of simulation model is shortly presented in this paper. It is designed as a preliminary design tool, allowing the different partners of a project to evaluate the energy impact of the very first design options: building envelope heat transfer coefficients, glazing areas, orientations, solar factors, ventilation mode, heat emission, distribution, generation and control strategy. The heating demand is calculated hour by hour with consideration to the time variations of inside and outside temperatures and free gains, to the control law and to the heating power actually available. The emitter is a water-ambient heat exchanger. It may have some thermal mass. Two emitters are here proposed: the radiator and the flow heating system. A steady state water distribution model is included in this simulation; it takes heat losses in unheated spaces into account: Three typical heating sources are proposed: classical boiler, condensing boiler and heat pump. All heat generators are here simulated with the help of very simple polynomial (“daughter”) models. The polynomial expressions are fitted on the simulation results obtained with reference (“mother”) models, themselves fitted on experimental data available. Examples of simulation results are presented in the paper