Robustness of a methodology for estimating hourly energy consumption of buildings using monthly utility bills

The evaluation of building energy consumption under typical meteorological conditions requires building energy profiles on an hourly basis. Computer simulations can be used to obtain this information, but generating simulations requires a significant amount of experience, time, and effort to enter detailed building parameters. This paper considers a simple methodology for using existing EnergyPlus benchmark building energy profiles to estimate the energy profiles of buildings with similar characteristics to a given benchmark model. The method utilizes the building monthly energy bills to scale a given benchmark building energy profile to approximate the real building energy profile. In particular, this study examines the robustness of the methodology considered with respect to the parameter discrepancies between a given building and the corresponding EnergyPlus benchmark model used to estimate its profile. Test buildings are defined by perturbing several combinations of the parameters defined in the benchmark building model. The test buildings examined are similar to the EnergyPlus, medium sized office, benchmark building in Baltimore, MD, and a total of 72 distinct test building configurations are examined. The analysis reveals that the methodology can significantly reduce the errors introduced by discrepancies from the EnergyPlus benchmark model.