Updated Typical Weather Years for the Energy Simulation of Buildings in Mediterranean Climate. A Case Study for Sicily

Vincenzo Costanzo, Gianpiero Evola, Marco Infantone and Luigi Marletta
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Vincenzo Costanzo: Department of Electric, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy
Gianpiero Evola: Department of Electric, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy
Marco Infantone: Department of Electric, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy
Luigi Marletta: Department of Electric, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Catania, Via Santa Sofia 64, 95123 Catania, Italy

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 16, 1-24

Abstract: Building energy simulations are normally run through Typical Weather Years (TWYs) that reflect the average trend of local long-term weather data. This paper presents a research aimed at generating updated typical weather files for the city of Catania (Italy), based on 18 years of records (2002–2019) from a local weather station. The paper reports on the statistical analysis of the main recorded variables, and discusses the difference with the data included in a weather file currently available for the same location based on measurements taken before the 1970s but still used in dynamic energy simulation tools. The discussion also includes a further weather file, made available by the Italian Thermotechnical Committee (CTI) in 2015 and built upon the data registered by the same weather station but covering a much shorter period. Three new TWYs are then developed starting from the recent data, according to well-established procedures reported by ASHRAE and ISO standards. The paper discusses the influence of the updated TWYs on the results of building energy simulations for a typical residential building, showing that the cooling and heating demand can differ by 50% or even 65% from the simulations based on the outdated weather file.

Keywords: weather data; typical weather year; building energy simulations; residential building; energy demand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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