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Building energy models (BEMs) are typically used for design and code compliance for new buildings and in the renovation of existing buildings to predict energy use. The increasing adoption of BEM as standard practice in the building industry presents an opportunity to extend the use of BEMs into construction, commissioning and operation. In 2009, the authors developed a real-time simulation framework to execute an EnergyPlus model in real time to improve building operation. This paper reports an enhancement of that real-time energy simulation framework. The previous version only works with software tools that implement the custom co-simulation interface of the Building Controls Virtual Test Bed (BCVTB), such as EnergyPlus, Dymola and TRNSYS. The new version uses an open standard interface, the Functional Mockup Interface (FMI), to provide a generic interface to any application that supports the FMI protocol. In addition, the new version utilizes the Simple Measurement and Actuation Profile (sMAP) tool as the data acquisition system to acquire, store and present data. This paper introduces the updated architecture of the real-time simulation framework using FMI and presents proof-of-concept demonstration results which validate the new framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupants account for a significant impact on building performance through their interactions with zone level building components. Empirically-derived occupant models, despite their potential to represent occupants’ impact in building performance simulation (BPS), have minimal penetration in design and code compliance processes. Instead, occupants are represented with static schedules or simple deterministic triggers. The objective of this paper is to better understand the influence of assumptions made in representing occupant interactions with building components over a BPS model's energy use and comfort predictions, as well as their ability to promote better design decisions. To this end, the energy and daylight performance of a generic perimeter office space in Ottawa, Canada were evaluated using a set of comprehensive performance metrics. Results indicate that representing dynamic occupant–building interactions lead to different energy predictions from the static schedules. The maximum difference in the total electricity use was for window-to-wall area ratios (WWR) of 20%, which was about 30% higher with the stochastic cases than the blind-open static cases. WWR 60% and 40% generally yielded the lowest lighting electricity use with the static and stochastic cases, respectively. This paper emphasizes the importance of incorporating empirically-derived dynamic occupant models for simulation-aided design and code compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupant behavior is one of the major factors influencing building energy consumption and contributing to uncertainty in building energy use prediction and simulation. Currently the understanding of occupant behavior is insufficient both in building design, operation and retrofit, leading to incorrect simplifications in modeling and analysis. This paper introduced the most recent advances and current obstacles in modeling occupant behavior and quantifying its impact on building energy use. The major themes include advancements in data collection techniques, analytical and modeling methods, and simulation applications which provide insights into behavior energy savings potential and impact. There has been growing research and applications in this field, but significant challenges and opportunities still lie ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]