A Building Energy Performance Model and Advisor System

The AFRESH home is an affordable, flexible, resilient, energy efficient, sustainable, and healthy home designed and built to integrate different technologies that help improve energy efficiency. The home is located at BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology, Burnaby, BC, WWW.bcit.ca) campus and is constructed with energy efficient, nontoxic, and environmentally friendly materials and features: photovoltaic (solar roof panel), wind turbine, fuel cell, energy storage, and distributed energy generation. The home is also fitted with a heat-recovery and geo-exchange HVAC system. This article explains the characteristics of AFRESH home under study and its energy performance model, followed by a description of the actual design and implementation of the home energy management system. Results of the research and the analysis of the results are also included in the paper.