| Modeling of energy consumption in buildings is essential for different applications such as building energy management and establishing baselines. This makes building energy consumption estimation as a key tool to achieve the goals on energy consumption and emissions reduction. Energy performance of building is complex, since it depends on several parameters related to the building characteristics, equipment and systems, weather, occupants, and sociological influences. This paper presents a new model to predict and quantify energy consumption in commercial buildings in the early stages of the design. eQUEST and DOE-2 building simulation software was used to build and simulate individual building configuration that were generated using Monte Carlo simulation technique. Ten thousands simulations for seven building shapes were performed to create a comprehensive dataset covering the full ranges of design parameters. The present study considered building materials, their thickness, building shape, and occupant schedule as design variables since building energy performance is sensitive to these variables. Then, the results of the energy simulations were implemented into a set of regression equation to predict the energy consumption in each design scenario. The difference between regression-predicted and DOE-simulated annual building energy consumption are largely within 5%. It is envisioned that the developed regression models can be utilized to estimate the energy savings in the early stages of the design when different building schemes and design concepts are being considered. Keywords: eQUEST simulation, DOE-2 simulation, Monte Carlo simulation, Regression equations, Building energy performance. |
