A Development of Heating and Cooling Load Prediction Equations for Office Buildings in Korea

The study intends to develop energy load prediction equations which can be easily used to estimate the energy consumption of office buildings in the central climatic zone in Korea during the early design stage. Based on an intensive literature search, energy strategies and performance levels which affect heating and cooling energy consumption were established for a reference baseline building. To analyze the sensitivity of each energy strategy to overall performance, the table of Orthogonal Array was used to decrease the number of experiments to 81 in spite of the fact that the required number for carrying out the simulation was 3(24) (= 282,429,536,481). The computer simulation was performed using EnergyPlus. At the same time, the Analysis of Variance was conducted to estimate the relative importance of each energy factor. The results of the ANOVA were used as data for multiple regression analysis which could develop the load prediction equations. The proposed equation will provide architects with a simple and yet reliable tool to estimate the energy load of a building at the early design stage. At the same time, it will enable architects to develop the best design solution in terms of energy performance.