Influence of weather boundary conditions on building energy modeling

Energy used for buildings is a large share of the energy consumed in the United States. Distributed power generation is a possible way to reduce energy consumption and emissions. Building energy consumption in urban environments is highly dependent on weather conditions surrounding the building, but most building energy simulations use weather data (TMY3) that is not site-specific. In this paper we investigated the influence of weather boundary conditions on energy simulations for 4 commercial building types by, comparing the electric and heating loads and rooftop photovoltaic power production for 3 locations in the same urban area. The results demonstrate that each of these commercial building types are similarly affected by site-specific weather conditions. In particular, they show that electrical loads are not very affected by this change, while the solar power production is overestimated by TMY3 data in comparison with customized weather data.