BECON: A Program for Predicting Building Energy Consumption for Air-Conditioning Buildings

An air-conditioning system simulation program BECON has been developed for predicting energy consumption for airconditioning in buildings. BECON relies on a buiiding heat transfer simulation pragram HTB2 to provide the input of hourly space cooling loads of a building. The two programs are adapted as the computing tool in HK-BEAM, the Hong Kong Building Environmental Assessment Method, launched in December 1996. in the paper, the range of system and equipment models included in BECON, the methods it uses to model the performance of air-conditioning systems, and the functions of its front-end program are described.