Quick Design Analysis for Improving Building Energy Performance

AbstractA building's overall energy performance may be understood as the variation of its energy balance and the extent to which additional heating or cooling energy is needed to maintain comfort. Different characteristics of a building impact the energy performance in ways that vary over time. Transmitted solar gain, for instance, might be an asset at one moment and a liability at another. Architects, designers, and builders often want to know how well a building can be expected to perform in this regard, and they are interested to know what improvements might be the most effective to reduce overall energy use. Many projects lack the budget required for an extensive energy analysis, which is a common approach for answering such questions, while often energy-efficiency guidelines do not address project specific performance issues related to the interactions of site, program and design.Quick analysis tools currently available tend to be inflexible and generic, and thus of limited use in giving design teams feedback about a specific design proposal. This paper presents a cost-effective analysis technique that assesses envelope and internal load characteristics (eg, transmitted solar gain, heat gain/loss of thermal mass, heat gain from equipment, etc) of a building design in terms of their relative benefit or liability to overall conditioning loads. Using data from the energy simulation of one design alternative, the tool presents overall performance of each building characteristic as well as a detailed visualization of performance over all 8760hours of a typical year. The cumulative ranking provides a prioritized list for overall building performance improvements, and the detailed data visualization suggests specific time periods on which the design team should focus