Variability of Building Simulation Results Depending On Selected Weather Files and Conditioning Set Points – a Case Study for a Residential Building in Victoria, Australia

Building simulation is a powerful way to evaluate the performance of a building. The quality of simulation results however strongly depends on the accuracy of simulation input data. Especially for weather data files and occupant behaviour it is difficult to obtain accurate data.

This paper evaluates the variability of building simulation results with regards to different weather data sets as well as different heating and cooling set points for a residential building in Victoria, Australia. Thermal comfort according to ASHRAE Standard 55, final energy consumption and peak cooling and heating loads are assessed. Simulations have been performed with Energy-Plus, and weather data for a multi-year approach have been generated with the software Meteonorm. The results show that different weather files for the same location as well as different conditioning set points can influence the results by approximately a factor of 2.