Energy consumption of residential HVAC systems: A simple physically-based model

The residential sector accounted for almost a quarter of the total 2009 energy consumption in the United States, namely 21.2 out of 94.6 Quadrillion BTU of primary energy. Space conditioning end-use includes Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and represents the most significant residential energy consumption. This paper proposes a simple, physically-based model to simulate electric and heating energy consumption of residential HVAC systems during the year, starting from a limited set of household characteristic parameters. The model relies on fundamental principles of thermodynamics and heat transfer applied to a control volume including solely the air present in the household. The model has been implemented in MATLAB^® and its flexibility allows different scenarios to be easily simulated and the impact of different technology adoptions to be assessed. A validation against actual metered residential load data provided by American Electric Power is provided.