On the evaluation of heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems

The combination of high demands concerning indoor air quality and thermal comfort as well as low environmental impact, while maintaining a building's energy consumption at acceptable levels, makes it necessary to develop a method for choosing and managing, in the best possible way, heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in new and existing buildings. This chapter presents a methodology that is based on a combination of two analysis tools, multi-criteria decision making and building simulation, in order to rank scenarios concerning the design of HVAC systems under different perspectives: economic performance, energy consumption, users' satisfaction and environmental impacts. The use of the ELECTRE III method and the coupling of TRNSYS and COMIS simulation programs are thoroughly discussed. The criteria describing the problem and an application example in order to evaluate the model are analytically presented.