How Energy Performance Modeling

using BIM is the future of Sustainable

Design

“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the
beginning of something else.”
Fred Rogers
Since the advent of last century the construction and operations of buildings
and workplaces have had an extensive impact on all all three elements of
Triple Bottom-line i.e they impact, People, Planet and Profit. To address these
challenges, we have seen a strong upsurge from society, government and
industry for the demand for sustainable design. Sustainable design is a rapidly
emerging field of building design which addresses all elements of Triple
Bottom-Line and brings out a win-win proposition for all participants of the
construction ecosystem. Sustainable Design focuses on following key
objectives
1. It aims to reduce the usage of vital resources like water, land, energy and
other raw materials
2. Reduce environmental degradation brought about by buildings throughout
their building life cycle
3. Create and operate buildings that are ergonomic, environmentally friendly and
safe for people
4. Reduce waste generation footprint be it construction related, occupant related
or demolition related
Owners and Tenants of Buildings, designers and builders are all finding it
relevant that they must invest in facilities that rank high on accessibility, health
and productivity while at the same time have minimal or even negative
impacts on the environment, economy and society. Sustainable design is
being aided by a slew of Executive Orders, Legislations, MOU’s and
Sustainability Goals whose adoptions are being driven by mandates from
federal agencies. To address these goals, designers and builders alike are
leveraging Building Information Modeling to make sure that in terms of
usability energy use and energy costs can be predicted and simulated. Energy
Performance Modeling is becoming very vital in Building Information
Modeling. The core advantage of Energy Performance Modeling are

• Accurate energy estimates during the design process

• Reliable life-cycle cost analysis using Energy Simulation
• Measurement and verification of Energy usage post building occupation
• Incorporating Energy Efficiency strategies for buildings

Energy Performance Modeling for designing new Buildings

Building Architecture, Selection of building materials, mechanical systems and
electrical controls systems are the factors that massively impact the energy
performance of a building. All major BIM software provide assessment and
simulation of energy performance of a building at design stage itself. We can
compare and evaluate the performance of a various materials and control
systems and map them with their capital costs, operating costs and Total Cost
 of Ownership (TCO). This understanding of energy performance modeling at
design process helps architect and technical consulting firms in understanding
the life cycle implications of materials being used and help in designing
energy efficient sustainable building..
Energy Performance Modeling for redesigning existing buildings
As of now, the Building Energy Performance Assessment is a standard
feature in all BIM Tools and Software. They are typically used to access the
impact of retrofitting existing building on improvements in energy performance
and related cost savings emanating from it. Current BIM tools allow for entry
of vital information data points like
• Thermal zone layout of the existing building.
• Weather data at that place.
• Load of the building like lighting and appliances as well as that of occupants,
schedules of operations and HVAC data
All these data points can easily be collated from specification drawings and
other input files having such modeling data parameters. These are fed into
simulation engines to calculate the energy consumption patterns of building.
Incorporating data like the geometry of the building, construction material time
and thermal properties of such material from BIM were traditionally being used
to drive the energy process. But at an empirical level, such exercises have
often been inaccurate. This is because as of now all BIM software energy
modeling is largely derived from types of generic building construction.
However, for modeling energy assessment of existing buildings, such
modeling using generic building construction is more often than not very
inaccurate as thermal resistance of buildings diminishes owing to deterioration
of buildings. The ability to import building construction thermal data from BIM
can significantly improve predictability in building energy modeling process.
New Developments in Energy Performance Modeling Space
The new approach as suggested by many luminaries in academia is to
leverage a collection of digital and thermal images on the basis of
environmental measurements to create a 3D thermal model of an existing
building that is being measured and then derive actual thermal resistance at
the level of 3-dimensional vertexes. These are mapped to a schema which
auto updates corresponding resistances thus enabling more accurate energy
modeling of an existing building. This method of measurement will not only
shorten the gap between actual data needed for energy usage simulation and
architectural information already available in BIM.
Conclusion
Usage of Energy performance Modeling is going to be a standard use case for
designing existing buildings and especially retrofitting existing building in
future. Designers, builders and building occupants and owners that are
involved in design process all agree that demolishing existing buildings and
creating Greenfield building have detrimental impact on environment, people
as well as on bottom-line of a balance sheet. To drive adoption it is of utmost
essence to make such energy modeling a prerequisite for retrofitting process.
Having it a a mandatory exercise through regulatory changes can also aid in
adoption of energy modeling as a vital element of sustainable design practice.