Dynamic energy simulation toward integrated design of non-residential buildings. Model description simplifications and their impact on simulation results

The present thesis stems from the benefits of the application of energy analysis in the early-stage building design. The research highlights the barriers that prevent this early integration and finally proposes the development of a simplified modelling methodology tailored around the optimization of energy efficiency during early-stage design. In general, the research aims to identify (a) the accuracy level obtainable through progressive simplifications of the building model, (b) the most significant building parameters with respect to the model accuracy and (c) the maximum level of simplification both able to ensure the respect of time requirements dictated by early-stage building design and to maintain an acceptable level of correctness. Those results are achieved by defining a methodology, which consists in developing a simplification protocol and applying it to a suitable number of case studies featuring large non-residential buildings starting from a detailed model and progressively enhancing the level of simplification. The protocol is based on the use of EnergyPlus software both to develop a detailed model of the building under various system hypothesis, and to simplify the model until a reasonable accuracy is still attained by the energy simulations. At each progressive simplification step, a comparison with the detailed model results is given in terms of building energy needs and power curves of the system. The quantitative differences between detailed and simplified model are analysed to determine the quality of the results of the simplified model. The results of the case studies are then utilized to propose the implementation of a simplified energy simulation tool based on the aforementioned protocol.