A new approach for selecting extreme meteorological years to support building energy simulation

Generation of typical meteorological year for integrated climate based daylight modeling and building energy simulation

A new method of generating extreme building energy year and its application

The increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events resulting from climate change have led to grid outages and other negative consequences. To ensure the resilience of buildings which serve as primary shelters for occupants, resilient strategies are being developed to improve their ability to withstand these extreme events (e.g., building upgrades and renewable energy generators and storage). However, a crucial step towards creating a resilient built environment is accurately estimating building performance during such conditions using historical extreme climate change-induced weather events. To conduct Building Performance Simulation (BPS) in extreme conditions, such as weather events induced by climate change, it is essential to utilize Actual Meteorological Year (AMY) weather files instead of Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) files. AMY files capture the precise climatic conditions during extreme weather events, enabling accurate simulation of such scenarios. These weather files provide valuable data that can be used to assess the vulnerabilities and resilience of buildings to extreme weather events. By analyzing past events and their impacts using BPS tools, we can gain insights into the specific weaknesses and areas that require improvement. This approach applies to both existing buildings needing climate change-resilient retrofits and new building designs that must be compatible with future climatic conditions. Moreover, the intensification and frequency increase of these extreme weather events makes developing adaptation and resilient-building measures imperative. This involves understanding the potential losses that households may experience due to the intensification of extreme events and developing farsighted coping strategies and climate-proof resilient-building initiatives. However, addressing the knowledge gap caused by the absence of an AMY weather file dataset of extreme events is essential. This will allow for accurate BPS during past extreme climate change-induced weather events. To fill this gap, this article introduces a comprehensive .epw format weather file dataset focusing on historical extreme weather events in Canada. This collection encompasses a diverse array of past extreme climate change occurrences in various locations, with potential for future expansion to include additional locations and countries. This dataset enables energy simulations for different types of buildings and considers a diverse range of historical weather conditions, allowing for better estimation of thermal performance.

Comparison of typical meteorological year generation methods for building energy simulation in marine climate of China

Generation of meteorological year for the assessment of photovoltaic systems performance in Togo, West Africa

Weather data is essential in determination of the performance of energy systems such as HVAC and solar energy systems. Weather data therefore, can be employed in designing more energy-efficient systems. This work focuses on the generation of a Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) Data for Abeokuta (7°7′1″ N, 3°22′13″E), a state in South-Western Nigeria by the use of a modified Sandia method. It makes use of seven weather parameters obtained over 29 years (1984 - 2012) in the construction of the TMY. Sandia method is highly affected by solar radiation even if its weight is reduced by half. The weights of other parameters such as temperature, wind, and relative humidity have less impact on the selection of TMY. The results of this study show that the weather pattern of Abeokuta follows the general diurnal variation of dry/harmattan season and wet/rainy season, typical to Nigeria. In this work also, the effect of general rise in temperature and solar radiation, indicative of global warming, is highlighted. Higher solar radiation values are majorly typical of a low cloud cover, and high clearness index. Suggestions were also made as to the preferable type of sustainable energy system to make use of in this location, as well as in the development of energy systems and data collection in Nigeria. The relevance of this work is that it would help to strengthen building energy standards, understand the local climate of Abeokuta and hence facilitate building energy system performance.

Energy exchanges between buildings is affected by urban fabric. As a matter of fact, heat exchange between adjacent buildings is due to convective and radiative heat flows. The main parameters which influence these heat exchange mechanisms are due to climate conditions such as air temperatures/humidity, wind speed/direction and solar irradiance. Most building energy simulations are done on an independent single building with typical meteorological year (TMY). These TMY meteorological data cannot represent the state of the urban microclimate and rather ignores the microclimate influence on buildings adjacent to street canyons. However, solar radiation shading and reflection of the environment within the street canyons are important factors affecting the energy consumption of buildings. In this work, a building energy simulation tool is used to study the impact of multiple shortwave inter-reflections in an urban environment. A street canyon model validated in a previous work was modeled in TRNSYS in order to simulate the effects of the urban radiative trapping. An urban canyon with aspect ratio H/W=1 was chosen, with South-North orientation, with transparent/opaque surfaces ratio Atr/Aop=0.5 and 4 values (0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8) of reflectance factor of the envelope surfaces. The goal is to characterize how solar absorption influence the urban energy requirements. The analysis was conducted for 3 cities in different climatic zones: Rome, Palermo and Krakow.

Developing a landscape of urban building energy use with improved spatiotemporal representations in a cool-humid climate

This study investigates the long-term impact of insulation degradation on building heating energy consumption, with a focus on extruded polystyrene (XPS) insulation. Year-by-year degradation in thermal transmittance was derived from long-term experimental data and applied to prototypical energy models of multifamily apartment buildings and office buildings. Simulations were performed using both Actual Meteorological Year (AMY) and Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data for six cities representing Korea’s major climate zones. The results showed that insulation degradation led to a significant increase in heating energy consumption from 23.2% to 34.9% in AMY simulations and 23.5% to 36.2% in TMY simulations for multifamily apartment buildings over 15 years. The difference between the AMY and TMY estimates was within 4%, demonstrating the reliability of TMY for long-term performance assessments. Notably, the southern and Jeju zones exhibited higher sensitivity to degradation due to their relaxed insulation standards and lower initial thermal performance. Office buildings were less affected, with increases below 8%, attributed to smaller envelope areas and higher internal heat gains. These findings highlight the need for zone-specific insulation standards and differentiated energy-saving design strategies by building type to ensure long-term energy efficiency.

Global climate change is significantly altering the energy consumption patterns and outdoor environments of buildings. The current meteorological data utilized for building design exhibit numerous deficiencies. To effectively address the needs of future building usage in design, it is crucial to establish more refined meteorological parameters that accurately reflect the climate of specific geographical locations. Utilizing 60 years of meteorological data from Guangzhou, this study employs the cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) method to define four archetypal meteorological years, providing a robust foundation for subsequent analysis. The findings indicate a significant increase in the frequency of high temperatures and temperature values during the summer months, with an increase of nearly 20% in the cumulative degree hours (CDHs) used for calculating a typical meteorological year (TMY4) over the past 30 years. Additionally, there has been an increase of 0.4–0.7 °C in the air conditioning design daily temperature. The statistics on outdoor calculation parameters for different geographical locations, as well as outdoor design parameters for varying guaranteed rate levels in the Pearl River Delta, reveal a substantial impact on outdoor calculation parameters. The maximum difference in cooling load is approximately 9.3%, with a generally high cooling demand in summer and a relatively low heating demand in winter. Furthermore, the calculation values for different non-guaranteed rates can be applied flexibly to meet the needs of engineering applications. This study provides a valuable reference for updating meteorological parameters in building design. By refining meteorological parameters, this study enables more accurate predictions of energy needs, leading to optimized building designs that reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It supports the development of resilient buildings capable of adapting to changing climatic conditions, thus contributing to long-term environmental sustainability.

This study presents a refined method for constructing Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) weather files in high-latitude regions, using Norway as a case study. We generate municipality-specific TMYs based on the CERRA, a high-resolution (5.5 km) dataset well-suited for Norway’s complex topography and varied climate. Standard TMY methods apply uniform weighting across all months, with heavy emphasis on solar radiation. However, this approach is suboptimal for high latitudes, where winter solar gains are minimal, and temperature is the primary driver of building energy demand. We introduce a modified approach, TMY-NO, which retains conventional multi-variable weighting during summer but shifts to temperature-dominant weighting in winter. This seasonal adjustment improves the thermal representativeness of the TMYs in heating-dominated contexts. Validation against various datasets confirm improved winter temperature accuracy without substantial loss in solar fidelity. A complete set of 358 municipality-level TMYs was produced and adopted as an annex to the Norwegian Standard NS3031.

Using BEopt (EnergyPlus) with energy audits and surveys to predict actual residential energy usage

The objective of this research is to study the impact of rise in atmospheric temperature, in buildings energy consumption in the future. An existing Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) weather file of time span 1973-1996 composed of weather data by Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment (SWERA) project is assumed as the baseline climate in this study. Monthly average temperature of future years in business as usual scenario predicted by Meteonorm is downscaled to hourly temperature data using downscaling method, morphing. This showed that annual average air temperature of the atmosphere will increase by 1.64¬0C, 2.12¬0C, 2.52¬0C and 2.28¬0C from baseline year in the years 2010, 2020, 2030, and 2040 respectively. Building energy simulation tool eQUEST is used to analyze the energy consumption pattern of a selected building located in Kathmandu. Study has shown that total energy consumption of the building for heating, cooling, lighting and miscellanies equipment will increase by 4.9%, 6.2%, 7.3% and 8.3% for the years 2010, 2020, 2030 and 2040 respectively from baseline year whereas cooling load will increase by 19%, 23%, 27% and 31%. The study also has shown that insulating a building will decrease the energy consumption. There will be decrease in the cooling energy consumption by 2.29%, 2.98%, 4.06% and 4.78% in the years 2010, 2020, 2030 and 2040 respectively after addition of insulation material mineral wool/fiber.Journal of the Institute of Engineering, 2017, 13(1): 102-107

The refurbishment of the existing housing stock has a twofold aim: to decrease consumption of fossil fuels and to reduce the CO2 emissions. The main focus of the presented paper is the evaluation of the integrated design approach applied in scenarios for refurbishment of the prefabricated residential multi-apartment building. The criteria used in searching for the best approach to the renewable energy sources-integrated refurbishment were minimized energy loads, minimized CO2 emissions and improved indoor environment quality, health and comfort. After in-depth environmental analysis, a series of energy efficiency improvement measures were implemented, as a comprehensive optimization of the building’s envelope structure, natural and mixed ventilation and source energy delivery. The building’s dynamic behaviour and energy efficiency have been analysed and optimized by the building performance simulation and PV panels’ integration for the typical meteorological year of Belgrade, Serbia. Energy refurbishment should be approached in an organized, pragmatic and interdisciplinary way. Hence, the focus should be not only on the latest leading-edge technology, but on the synergy of different practices and principles in order to ensure the path to sustainable development and achieving desired objectives.

The impact of using different weather datasets for predicting current and future energy performance of residential buildings in Egypt