Overview
Building energy analysis software is increasingly used in the design and planning of buildings. The goal of this project was to undertake pre-normative research to develop a comprehensive and integrated suite of building energy analysis tool tests involving analytical, comparative, and empirical methods. These methods will provide for quality assurance of the software, and some of the methods will be enacted by codes and standards bodies to certify software used for showing compliance to building energy standards. This goal was pursued with the following objectives in mind:
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To create and make widely available a comprehensive and integrated suite of IEA Building Energy Simulation Test (BESTEST) cases for evaluating, diagnosing, and correcting building energy simulation software. Tests addressed modelling of the building thermal fabric and building mechanical equipment systems in the context of solar and low energy buildings.
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To maintain and expand as appropriate analytical solutions for building energy analysis tool evaluation.
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To create and make widely available high quality empirical validation data sets, including detailed and unambiguous documentation of the input data required for validating software, for a selected number of representative design conditions.
There were two research areas: comparative tests, and empirical validation.
Participants
Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States