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Power Signatures as Characteristics of Commercial and Related Buildings
Abstract
This paper proposes the use of "power signatures" as
an important concept for building energy analysis. Power signatures
are considered to contain "energy or power
characteristics" of a building. Developing relationships between
energy characteristics and building physical characteristics
is seen as an important area for improvement of
analytical tools for commercial and related buildings.
Knowledge of the causes of variations in energy use, and the
expected relative impacts of different schedules, functional
uses, and energy systems, should be improved. A categorization
of analysis methods is presented to define the
parameters of interest for several currently used methods.
Power signatures indicate building energy behavior with
respect to time, so the parameters of interest are average
power level and time of occurrence. Because a rate quantity
(power) is used, comparisons between different time steps
are practical. If practitioners could begin using power signature
concepts to present energy use data on buildings, improved
communication of results appears possible. Potential
future study could be continued in several areas to improve
the use of power signatures and energy analysis overall.
Citation
MacDonald, M. (1988). Power Signatures as Characteristics of Commercial and Related Buildings. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu); Texas A&M University (http://www.tamu.edu). Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /6516.