Analysis of Actual, Typical and Normative Climate Data in the Context of Buildings Energy Modeling

Abstract

This article analyses the actual, normative monthly and typical detailed climatic data for the city of Kyiv. Data on actual outdoor air temperatures during 2014-2021 were compared with indicators in accordance with Ukrainian regulations and the most common typical hourly climate files used for building energy modeling: International Weather for Energy Calculations (IWEC), Meteonorm, Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) from PVGIS tool and Onebuilding web-site. The values for outside air temperatures were compared on an average monthly basis and using the number of hours of outside air temperature duration. The latter approach allows to more accurately assess the energy efficiency indicators and energy consumption of heat supply systems with heat pumps. As the buildings energy need and energy consumption for heating values are significantly affected by heat gains due to solar radiation, a comparison of the normative value of global radiation on the horizontal surface with the values from the most common typical climatic data was also performed based on an average monthly basis. Taking into account the set of analysed climatic factors using monthly indicators for outside air temperatures and number of hours of outside air temperature duration, it is decided to use Meteonorm hourly data for Kyiv for further dynamic energy modeling of building with heat supply system based on different types of heat pumps, including the air-to-water and water(brine)-to-water ones. Also, climatic data used in RETScreen program show similar figures as normative values and therefore this program will be used for further technical and economic analysis as well and the results will be compared to the specialised program for heat pumps calculations GeoT*SOL, which also provides the detailed calculation of heat pumps system technical performance and economic calculations. In addition, possible deviations in the values of energy need for heating of the building when using different climatic data were estimated using the DesignBuilder / EnergyPlus software product. The potential deviation of energy need for heating results can be around -10…+6.5%.