Standards Development

Scope

This document specifies performance based calculation procedures for the assessment of the energy needs for heating and cooling, internal temperatures and sensible and latent heat loads of a building, as alternative for the hourly calculation method provided in EN ISO 52016-1.

This document specifies a set of validation test cases with reference results and acceptance criteria.

This document is applicable to buildings at the design stage, to new buildings after construction and to existing buildings in the use phase.

Purpose

This proposal concerns the preparation of a new standard that fills a gap in the set of EPB standards (ISO 52000 family).

There is a need to open up the hourly calculation method of ISO 52016-1 by allowing, to a certain extent, alternative calculation methods. This would remove some of the barriers for more detailed simulation tools to include a mode that complies with the set of EPB standards (ISO 52000 family), as far as the scope of ISO 52016-1 and this new standard is concerned: calculation of the energy needs for heating and cooling, internal temperatures and sensible and latent heat loads of a building. This is quite a challenge, because the main use of this standard (being part of the set of EPB standards) will be in the context of building regulations: for comparing the energy performance of buildings (energy performance labels and certificates) and for checking compliance with minimum energy performance criteria. For this area of application, it is vital that unambiguity, transparency, robustness, verifiability, affordability and reproducibility and a level playing field for different products and technologies are maintained.

But the advantages would be that the barrier to apply building simulation tools would be decreased and (more in general) it would stimulate the development and application of ‘better’ algorithms and software tools, e.g. more efficient solution techniques, more user-friendly tools or software tools tailored for a specific range of applications or markets or integrated in a tool for wider application.

This means, to some extent, the introduction of a performance based approach. This requires, without re-inventing the wheel (e.g. ANSI/ASHRAE standard 140), the development of carefully designed test cases with reference results and acceptance criteria. But it also requires a clear specification of the boundaries of the degrees of freedom: the main challenge is to find a good balance between opening up and maintaining the existing quality aspects mentioned above.

This proposal will meet the requirements for overall consistency, quality and editorial set up, in line with the basic principles, detailed technical rules and overarching standard for the set of EPB standards. As one of the consequences, a proposal for an accompanying technical report will be prepared (at appropriate later date).

The work supports UN SDGs 7 and 13 by stimulating energy efficiency, UN SDG 9 by stimulating innovation and UN SDG 11 by improving buildings.

This work item (if approved) will be carried out under the Vienna Agreement between ISO and CEN, with ISO lead, in cooperation with CEN/TC 89.