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A review of validation methods for building energy modeling programs

  • Review Article
  • Advances in Modeling and Simulation Tools
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Abstract

Building energy simulation analysis plays an important supporting role in the conservation of building energy. Since the early 1980s, researchers have focused on the development and validation of building energy modeling programs (BEMPs) and have basically formed a set of systematic validation methods for BEMPs, mainly including analytical, comparative, and empirical methods. Based on related papers in this field, this study systematically analyzed the application status of validation methods for BEMPs from three aspects, namely, sources of validation cases, comparison parameters, and evaluation indicators. The applicability and characteristics of the three methods in different validation fields and different development stages of BEMPs were summarized. Guidance were proposed for researchers to choose more suitable validation methods and evaluation indicators. In addition, the current development trend of BEMPs and the challenges faced by validation methods were investigated, as well as the existing progress of current validation methods under this trend was analyzed. Subsequently, the development direction of the validation method was clarified.

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Abbreviations

ASHRAE:

American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers

BEMPs:

building energy modeling programs

BESTEST:

building energy simulation test

BIM:

building information modeling

BIPV:

building integrated photovoltaic

CFD:

computational fluid dynamics

CoD:

coefficient of discrimination

COP:

coefficient of performance

FPR:

false positive rate

HVAC:

heating ventilation air conditioning

IEA:

International Energy Agency

obFMU:

occupant behavior functional mock-up unit

obXML:

occupant behavior extensible markup language

OR:

opening rate

PCM:

phase change material

RMSE:

root mean square error

TNR:

true negative rate

TPR:

true positive rate

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52078117), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52108068), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52225801), and the “Zhishan” Scholars Programs of Southeast University (2242021R41145).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, 210096, China

    Xin Zhou, Ruoxi Liu, Xiaohan Shen & Xinyu Yang

  2. College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Shuai Tian

  3. Key Laboratory of Ecology and Energy-saving Study of Dense Habitat, Ministry of Education, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Shuai Tian

  4. School of Environment and Energy Engineering, Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Beijing, 100044, China

    Jingjing An

  5. Building Energy Research Center, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Da Yan

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Contributions

Xin Zhou: conceptualization, formal analysis, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing. Ruoxi Liu: data curation, formal analysis, writing—original draft. Shuai Tian: data curation, formal analysis, visualization. Xiaohan Shen: data curation, visualization. Xinyu Yang: data curation, visualization. Jingjing An: writing—review & editing. Da Yan: conceptualization, supervision, writing—review & editing.

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Correspondence to Da Yan.

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The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. Xin Zhou and Jingjing An are Subject Editors of Building Simulation. Da Yan is the Editor-in-Chief of Building Simulation.

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Zhou, X., Liu, R., Tian, S. et al. A review of validation methods for building energy modeling programs. Build. Simul. 16, 2027–2047 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-023-1050-0

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