Parameter analysis of building energy consumption using variance-based method

This paper proposes a new and efficient methodology for the simulation-based sensitivity analysis of building energy performance, which facilitates decision making in the early phases of the building design stages. In this research, variance-based global sensitivity analysis algorithm is implemented in MATLAB and coupled with EnergyPlus building energy simulation program to clarify predominant variables affecting the building energy efficiency. To investigate the potential and effectiveness of the developed method, it is applied to a single room model; and the impacts of the building design parameters, including the building orientation, the window size, and the wall and glazing thermal properties on the energy consumption are studied in four major climatic regions of Iran. In the result section, the local and global sensitivity analysis of the annual cooling, heating, lighting and total building electricity consumption is conducted to understand the trend of building energy demands due to the variations of input factors and rank the parameters based on the strength of their influence on the output variables. The results of the sensitivity analysis illustrate that for our typical model, in all climates; the window size is the prevailing parameter on the annual cooling, heating and total building energy demands, while the glazing visible transmittance has the most influence on the lighting one. The proposed simulation-based sensitivity analysis method shows a powerful and useful tool that aid architects and building designer to concentrate on the most important parameters in the initial stages of building design in order to enhance the building energy efficiency.

Keywords:

Building energy efficiency , EnergyPlus , MATLAB , Variance-based Sensitivity analysis , Total effect index