AT-90-11-2 -- Errors in Audit Prediction of Commercial Lighting and Equipment Loads and Their Impacts on Heating and Cooling Estimates PDF

Uses a sample of 13 buildings that have received energy audits and are instrumented to collect end-use metered data to illustrate the uncertainty and range of errors in end-use loads predicted by energy audits in commercial buildings. The analysis focuses on audit prediction of pre-retrofit annual lighting and miscellaneous equipment loads and their impacts on the heating and cooling load estimates. Finds that the mean errors are in the order of 20% to 40%, which suggests the need for further analysis of more fundamental thermal analysis errors.

KEYWORDS: Buildings, USA, energy auditing, accuracy, commercial, lighting, heat load, cooling load.