Tool for Hourly Energy Consumption Estimation in Existing Office Buildings

Building energy consumption analysis is a difficult task because it depends on the characteristics and interaction among the building, the heating/cooling system, and the surroundings. Since the evaluation of building energy consumption usually requires building energy profiles on an hourly basis, which often is not available for existing buildings, the hourly energy consumption must be estimated. The dynamic behavior of the weather conditions and building operation makes computer simulations a good practice for reliable solutions. However, an energy building computer simulation requires a significant amount of experience, time, and effort to enter detailed building parameters, which is a drawback for a cost-effective solution. Therefore, simplified models based on statistics or a combination of statistics and simulations may be a better solution with reasonable uncertainty. This paper presents a tool to estimate hourly building energy consumption for existent office buildings. The proposed tool, developed in Microsoft Excel, uses simulation data from EnergyPlus Commercial Reference Buildings to convert monthly energy consumption from utility bills into hourly energy consumption. Results account for baseline and variable energy consumption for electricity and fuel. The site weather conditions, for which the energy consumption is estimated, are considered using the sixteen climate zones of the U.S.