Probabilistic energy consumption analysis in buildings using point estimate method

This paper analyzes the energy consumption of buildings considering the uncertainty of structural and environmental parameters. To this end, two-point estimate method (2PEM) is used to model the uncertainties. EnergyPlus software is used in this paper to evaluate the energy consumption, the thermal comfort, and the energy cost of a building. We examine the proposed method in a retail building to show the effectiveness of the method in comparison with the Monte-Carlo Simulation and deterministic methods. The results show that the 2PEM method although may cause a bit accuracy loss, it can considerably reduce the simulation time by more than 97%. In addition, a sensitivity analysis is effectuated in this paper to investigate the impacts of different climate zones on the results of energy consumption analysis.