Impact Assessment in the Process of Propagating Climate Change Uncertainties into Building Energy Use

Hamed Yassaghi and Simi Hoque
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Hamed Yassaghi: Department of Civil Architectural and Environmental Engineering, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Simi Hoque: Department of Civil Architectural and Environmental Engineering, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 2, 1-27

Abstract: Buildings are subject to significant stresses due to climate change and design strategies for climate resilient buildings are rife with uncertainties which could make interpreting energy use distributions difficult and questionable. This study intends to enhance a robust and credible estimate of the uncertainties and interpretations of building energy performance under climate change. A four-step climate uncertainty propagation approach which propagates downscaled future weather file uncertainties into building energy use is examined. The four-step approach integrates dynamic building simulation, fitting a distribution to average annual weather variables, regression model (between average annual weather variables and energy use) and random sampling. The impact of fitting different distributions to the weather variable (such as Normal, Beta, Weibull, etc.) and regression models (Multiple Linear and Principal Component Regression) of the uncertainty propagation method on cooling and heating energy use distribution for a sample reference office building is evaluated. Results show selecting a full principal component regression model following a best-fit distribution for each principal component of the weather variables can reduce the variation of the output energy distribution compared to simulated data. The results offer a way of understanding compound building energy use distributions and parsing the uncertain nature of climate projections.

Keywords: climate change; building energy use; propagating uncertainties; input distributions; regression model (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: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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