Report on High Performance Building's Energy Modeling, Physical Building Information Modeling for Solar Building Design and Simulation

Abstract

This report was created for the National Science Foundation-Physical Building Information Modeling (NSF-PBIM) project. This report describes the analysis of a solar office building using the following software: the legacy tools (DOE 2.1e, the F-Chart and the PV-F Chart) for whole-building energy analysis, solar thermal analysis and solar electric analysis; the Revit software that was used to render the images of the solar office building and get feedback for the DOE-2.1e; and the Inverse Model Toolkit (IMT) program to transfer data between the legacy tools during the first two years of the National Science Foundation Physical Building Information Modeling (NSF PBIM) project at Texas A&M University. The results show that the high performance solar office building reduced annual energy consumption by 100 (i.e., Net Zero) percent in both Houston and Denver as compared to a regular office building. In other words, the Net-Zero Energy Office Building which was designed with legacy tools, produces as much as or more energy than it consumes. The solar office building used different renewable energy systems, such as a solar Domestic Hot Water (DHW) system, clerestory windows, daylighting sensors and photovoltaic panels to achieve the Net-Zero Energy Building level.