Validation and evaluation of total energy use in office buildings: A case study

Abstract This paper illustrates the concept of using dynamic simulation as an instrument for total energy performance validation and analysis for office buildings and their HVAC systems. The intent is to use simulations to establish performance criteria to evaluate monitored data to validate building performance, analyze energy, and to predict the energy consumption during the planning phase. In this study, the total energy use is examined in a real office building modeled using a dynamic simulation. The very comprehensive measured data about energy consumption for each part of the HVAC systems and appliances were compared with the simulation results. The results of this analysis suggest that very good agreement can be achieved using the available precise input data, especially building occupancy patterns and activities.