Experimental Validation of EnergyPlus® Simulation of a Single Storey Building

EnergyPlus® simulated indoor temperatures of a single storey building at the east campus of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, for April and June, are validated with measurements taken in 2007. The measured local outdoor temperature was used together with the global solar radiation, wind velocity, relative humidity and cloud cover measured at the Kuching airport to replace the typical meteorological year (TMY) values in the EnergyPlus® weather (EPW) file to fonn a Modified EPW weather file at the time/date of experiments. The remaining fields of the Modified EPW contain TMY data including the direct and diffuse solar radiations and the 'sky's' infrared radiation, which is also present at night. Analysis of the temperatures at the windows simulated with the EPW and Modified EPW weather files for the April and June experiments show the strong influence of the outdoor temperature and importance of the global solar radiation in the weather file and local outdoor temperature is used in the Modified EPW. Day time peak mismatches between the measured indoor air temperature and the indoor air temperature simulated with the Modified EPW is 2 to 3 deg C. These are due to the use of the TMY direct and diffuse solar radiations in the heat balance algorithms at the outside surfaces. The corresponding night time mismatches are less than 1 deg C because the TMY values of the long wave infra-red radiation emitted from molecules and particles in the atmosphere in the Modified EPW are used in simulation.