Dynamic Simulation of Annual Energy Consumption in an Office Building by Thermal Resistance-Capacitance Method

The basic heat transfer process that occurs in a building can best be illustrated by an electrical circuit network. Present paper reports the dynamic simulation of annual energy consumption in an office building by the thermal resistance capacitance network method. Unsteady thermal behaviors and annual energy consumption in an office building were examined in detail by solving the simultaneous circuit equations of thermal network. The results are used to evaluate the accuracy of the modified BIN method for the energy consumption analysis of a large building. Present thermal resistance-capacitance method predicts annual energy consumption of an office building with the same accuracy as that of response factor method. However, the modified BIN method gives 15% lower annual heating load and 25% lower cooling load than those from the present method. Equipment annual energy consumptions for fan, boiler and chiller in the HVAC system are also calculated for various control systems as CAV, VAV, FCU+VAV and FCU+CAV. FCU+CAV system appears to consume minimum annual energy among them.