[Equest-users] Scale modeling

Karen Walkerman kwalkerman at gmail.com
Mon Apr 9 14:17:35 PDT 2012


The short answer is that every building is different, and there is no
"typical" model that will fit them all.

As you mentioned, the ratio between lighting/cooling/heating changes
depending on the size of the building.  I'm willing to guess that this is
because the core zones that have very little need for heat get much larger
in relation to the perimeter zones.  Also, the building energy needs will
change depending on orientation and global location.

I would suggest that you take a slightly different approach - try to come
up with values that are representative for different types of spaces.  You
might do say:

1.  A perimeter office space with XX% glazing (run for North, East, South
and West exposures)
2.  A core office space with no skylights
3.  A core office space with XX% of roof area as skylights
4.  A core manufacturing space???
5,6,7....

Run each model in the applicable climate.  Then, if you have an office
building that is 70% core and 30% perimeter space, you'll have a better
understanding of the building.  This is still a very rough approximation,
but should get you farther than trying to model one "typical" building.

--
Karen



On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 4:57 PM, Stefano Moret <smoret at ucdavis.edu> wrote:

>  Dear all,****
>
> ** **
>
> I've recently played around quite a bit with E-quest to simulate the
> effect of dynamic fenestration on building energy consumption. ****
>
> For these simulations I've been using a very simple office model with a
> skylight on the top as a test-bed for my calculations (with default system
> for HVAC and daylighting controls with dimming for lights) but, observing
> the values I'm obtaining in output, I see that the values I obtain for
> lighting, cooling and heating consumption make sense relatively, i.e. if
> compared to themselves in different conditions, but are sometimes of
> totally different order of magnitude if compared to each other
> (lighting/cooling loads are often much higher than heating, by orders of
> magnitude), especially when scaling up the model to bigger sizes. This way,
> it's very difficult to see the effect of a variable change on the total
> energy consumption. ****
>
> ** **
>
> I know the model I'm using is very idealized, but is there any variable
> that I can act on in order to obtain a model which has energy consumption
> values more similar to a real building? For example, is there a "suggested"
> size of the building that gives better results? Or maybe simulating a
> single room in a large building gives more realistic results than the
> single room alone? ****
>
> My point is that I would like to have a model whose results in scale might
> be consistent when applied to bigger buildings. ****
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks for your hints and suggestions, ****
>
> Stefano****
>
> ** **
>
> --****
>
> ** **
>
> Stefano Moret
> California Lighting Technology Center <http://cltc.ucdavis.edu/>
> University of California, Davis
> 633 Pena Drive
> Davis, CA 95618
>
> ****
>
> 530-747-3846
> smoret at ucdavis.edu <smoret at ad3.ucdavis.edu> ****
>
> ** **
>
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