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

Efficient building design, and management of this through to the building's operation is critical as sub-optimal performance becomes difficult to detect and assess once in the operational stage. Building energy modelling can facilitate this through identifying operational drift away from the optimal building performance. However existing energy modelling tools fail to meet many of the needs to manage this process, due to the excessive complexity of modelling frameworks. Furthermore, models are not typically integrated with operational information from buildings to facilitate and maintain building performance in the operational stage. The aim of this project is to demonstrate an innovative energy modelling framework for clusters of buildings to improve their design, operation, compliance, data management and analytics. This case study considers new and existing buildings within the BCA Academy Campus in Singapore over three phases to compare and determine the potential for optimal building performance across the campus. Phase 1 creates a 3D masterplanning model used to store, visualise and compare key building parameters to enable advanced design and compliance planning. In Phase 2, more detailed building energy models are created for two proposed new campus buildings, which are used to simulate and analyse the impact of various design options, and guide optimal building design in line with BCA requirements. Phase 3 focuses on creating a highly calibrated detailed model of an existing building, where measured data is used to improve the level of accuracy between the model and the actual performance to with-in +/-5%. This allows for accurate simulation to assess and further improve the buildings performance virtually, ahead of making actual changes in the building.