Exploring the impact of model calibration on estimating energy savings through better space heating control

It is widely accepted that simulation tools need to be carefully configured with appropriate inputs to yield good estimates of building performance. Having a good representation of a building’s performance is particularly important when trying to generate a baseline against which energy savings are to be measured. This is especially challenging in residential buildings where there is a high dependency on occupant behaviour. Relevant data for domestic building is scarce and an option is to use existing guidelines published by organisations such as CIBSE or DOE. This paper considers the relative savings that might be expected by implementing several space heating control strategies, by evaluating the change in performance from a baseline model. The impact of calibrating the model on the results is given as is a description of the calibration approach used. It is demonstrated that potential energy savings can be either over or under predicted depending on the nature of the control strategy employed.