TA-23-C066 – Evaluating the Influence of Program Type Building Parameters on UBEM: A Case Study for the Residential Stock in Nottingham, UK PDF

In the midst of rising concern about the implications of climate change, the European Union and the United Kingdom appears to be on the verge of establishing policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The urban building energy models could inform energy analyzers and decision makers for the future results that specific comprehensive energy refurbishment strategies and energy supply infrastructure changes might have. Nonetheless, the data challenges that emerge are various. The lack of data availability and reliability, the data computing issue and data privacy are, only, some of the challenges of building energy modelling, which are intensified in urban scale. Therefore, the investigation of the influence of building parameters on the energy demand results is deemed necessary, in order both to understand the minimum data requirements for urban energy modelling, and the impact of them before the design phase for the new constructions. Therefore, this Paper’s intention is to inform stakeholders from energy analysts to data capture companies, about the influential building parameters, as regards to the Program Type, such as the infiltration, the domestic hot water and the ventilation. An UBEM physics-based approach, for the estimation of the annual energy demand, is implemented with the use of Grasshopper software, and the visualization of the results is done with the QGIS software. The case study is in Nottingham city, in UK, and the energy demand for the whole year of the dwelling stock is estimated. Then, a sensitivity analysis for the influence of the Program Type building parameters is presented. The results have shown that the most impactful parameter among the three under-tested is the infiltration (airtightness) of a dwelling.