TITLE:
The Identification of Peak Period Impacts When a TMY Weather File Is Used in Building Energy Use Simulation
AUTHORS:
Jay Zarnikau, Shuangshuang Zhu
KEYWORDS:
Peak Demand Reduction; Energy Efficiency Impact Analysis; Building Energy Use Simulation
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Energy Efficiency,
Vol.3 No.1,
March
11,
2014
ABSTRACT: When typical
meteorological year (TMY) data are used as an input to simulate the energy used
in a building, it is not clear which hours in the weather data file might correspond
to an electric or natural gas utility’s peak demand. Yet, the determination of
peak demand impacts is important in utility resource planning exercises and in
determining the value of demand-side management (DSM) actions. We propose a
formal probability-based method to estimate the summer and winter peak demand
reduction from an energy efficiency measure when TMY data and model simulations
are used to estimate peak impacts. In the estimation of winter peak demand
impacts from some example energy efficiency measures in Texas, our proposed
method performs far better than two alternatives. In the estimation of summer
peak demand impacts, our proposed method provides very reasonable results which
are very similar to those obtained from the Heat Wave approach adopted in
California.