Origins of analysis methods used to design high-performance commercial buildings: Whole-building energy simulation

Abstract

Many commercial buildings today do not perform the way they were simulated. One potential reason for this discrepancy is that designers using building energy simulation programs do not fully understand the analysis methods that the programs are based on and may therefore have unreasonable expectations about the actual system performance or energy use. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to trace the origins of the most widely used building energy simulation programs and the analysis methods of thermal envelope loads used in the software to analyze high-performance commercial buildings in the United States. Such an analysis is important to better understand the capabilities of building energy simulation programs so they can be used more accurately to simulate the performance of an intended design. In this study, a new comprehensive genealogy chart was developed to support the explanations for the origins of the analysis methods of thermal envelope loads used in whole-building energy simulation programs. Two other works (Oh and Haberl 2015a, 2015b) explained the origins of the analysis methods of solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, passive solar, and daylighting simulation programs.