Comparison of methodologies for generation of future weather data for building thermal energy simulation.

• Future-TMY (F-TMY) and Morphing methodologies are compared in 14 Iberian cities. • Morphing sensitive analysis using 3 different files is performed. • High-quality Morphing and F-TMY have similar climate and BES performances (7%−8%). • F-TMY is representative of the multi-year simulation for BES applications. • Low-quality Morphing leads to average errors between 16% to 20%. In the last decade, building energy simulation (BES) became a central component in building energy systems' design and optimization. For each building location, BES requires one year of hourly weather data. Most buildings are designed to last 50+ years, consequently, the building design phase should include BES with future weather files considering climate change. This paper presents a comparative study of two methods to produce future climate hourly data files for BES: Morphing and typical meteorological year of future climate (F-TMY). The study uses data from a high-resolution (9 km) regional climate atmospheric model simulation of Iberia, spanning 10 years of historical and future hourly data. This study compares both methods by analyzing anomalies in air temperature, and the impact in BES predictions of annual and peak energy consumption for space heating, cooling and ventilation in 4 buildings. Additionally, this study performs a sensitivity analysis of morphing method. The analysis shows that F-TMY is representative of the multi-year simulation for BES applications. A high-quality Morphed TMY weather file has a similar performance compared to F-TMY (average difference: 8% versus 7%). Morphing based on different baseline climates, low-grid resolution and/or outdated climate projections leads to BES average differences of 16%-20%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]