This thesis presents a methodology developed to aid in the determination of
potential sources and the potential scale of energy savings in commercial buildings. As
a pre-screening tool, the methodology is designed to serve as the first analysis of the
building’s potential for energy savings using limited data prior to a site visit. A
Microsoft® Excel-based tool was developed to perform this analysis semi-automatically
with user operation. A fundamental concept used in this methodology is that of the
energy balance load, defined as heating plus electricity minus cooling.
The methodology is designed to require only historical weather data, historical
whole-building energy consumption data, the total conditioned floor area, and the basic
function of the building. Upon following a short procedure developed and outlined in
this thesis, this limited data yields information that can lead to conclusions about the
building’s energy consumption. The output information includes estimates of a major
building thermal parameter—the building’s overall heat transfer coefficient including the
total outside air flow rate into the building. In addition to providing this information, the
Excel tool includes already-formatted plots of the energy consumption commonly used in energy analysis. These include cooling, heating, and electricity vs. both outside air
temperature and time.
Three case studies illustrate the utility of this methodology. The calculated
energy balance load—calculated using parameters determined through this
methodology—yielded values on average within 5.4% of measured values.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2400 |
| Date | 2008 December 1900 |
| Creators | Hicks, Dave C. |
| Contributors | Claridge, David E. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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