Modeling of Heating and Cooling Energy Needs in Different Types of Smart Buildings

Over the last decades, the growing energy consumption of commercial and residential buildings has considerably increased the energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. At EU level, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) has introduced the transformation of buildings into nearly zero energy buildings (nZEBs) that cover the majority of their low energy demand by on-site renewable energy sources. In this direction, the project PV-ESTIA “Enhancing storage integration in buildings with Photovoltaics” aims at developing and validating various optimal energy management strategies in buildings equipped with Photovoltaics (PV) and storage systems. One of the main requirements for the application of the developed strategies is the accurate computation of energy consumption, and particularly, of heating and cooling energy needs. In this paper, a simple and accurate model based on the “grey-box” concept is proposed for the computation of hourly thermal energy needs in different types of premises by using the standard ISO 52016-1:2017. The method's performance is evaluated by comparing the results with those of other simulation programs for ten European cities with climatic variations. It is concluded that the proposed model presents high accuracy on the computation of the operative temperature, since it considers the air temperature, as well as the temperatures and the areas of the internal surfaces. Finally, any deviations with the other simulation tools are due to differences in the internal air temperature, weather data, as well as the approaches of ventilation and shading effects.