Development of an Innovative Energy Modelling Framework for Design and Operation of Building Cluster in the Tropics

Project Key Words:: energy modelling, masterplanning, building operation, energy management, building design

CO PI(s):: Mr. Majid Haji Sapar; Organization:BCA; Designation:Senior Manager

Project Description:: The collaborative project undertaken by IES and the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) Singapore has successfully demonstrated an innovate energy modelling approach to improve and optimise the performance of building clusters, such as a Campus. The framework developed identifies performance issues within buildings and improves their design, operation, compliance, data management and analytics.

Project Impact: The projects deliverables demonstrated the effectiveness of different levels of energy models for different performance analysis requirements aiming to assess and optimize building(s) design and performance. The framework described illustrates how complex BEMs with hundreds of inputs are not always required for energy performance analysis, and more simplified models with reduced inputs and data requirements can provide required guidance in terms of decision making at a group and individual building level for certain types of analysis.It demonstrated in different phases that different levels of models are appropriate for different types of energy management and analysis (from simple high level to detail analysis depending on the requirements). Different phases of this approach have wide replicability across the sector in terms of managing, identifying and accurately analyzing building(s) energy consumption and improvement opportunities for the majority of building types.Further work would focus on defining the scalability of this framework to include a larger number of building types and community sizes, as well as more detailed experimentation on the differences in the accuracy of the results from various levels of models.

Project Outcomes:: The IMCSD has set a target to have at least 80% of the buildings in Singapore BCA Green Mark certified by 2030 as per the 2nd Green Building Masterplan. As Green Mark is implemented across Singapore, it will be essential for BCA to ensure that the certified buildings perform as well as they were designed across the building lifecycle.

Efficient design is critical, especially at the early stages - as poor decisions made early become difficult or impossible to correct. Existing energy simulation tools fail to meet the needs of architects and building designers at the early stages of design due to the excessive complexity of the tools, required technical knowledge and the time required to run the simulation.

To address these issues, this project focused on developing an innovative framework for analysis and demonstrating and assessing an innovate energy modelling framework which employs appropriate levels of models for different levels of analysis, from clusters of buildings down to individual building level with the aim of identifying performance issues and improving building(s) design, operation, compliance, data management and analytics.