Investigating the Effect of Different Energy Saving Strategies on Energy Rating of Building by Design Builder Software (Case Study: Office Building)

Reducing fossil energy resources, the environmental impact of high energy consumption and increasing the energy consumption in the building section, has increased the importance of attention to building energy consumption in the country. Providing the standard of building energy consumption in our country is one of the important activities in this regard. This study aimed to determine the effect of different strategies to reduce energy consumption in the energy classification of office buildings as a case study by Design Builder software.

In this study, the total energy consumption of of an office building in Semnan climate was simulated by Design Builder software and the results obtained by the software, with the actual energy consumption of the building in 2016, which was obtained from the energy bills (electricity and gas) of the building, were validated. Then, using the energy rating of building, different strategies for reducing energy consumption were simulated and compared with the existing situation.

Using energy simulation software, various energy efficiency strategies such as using external horizontal shading and removing internal shading, replacing windows with low-emitting double-glazed windows instead of single-glass windows and installing a thermal insulation in the external wall of the building were investigated that 15.2, 18.4 and 8.2% reduction in energy consumption achived compared to normal case, respectively. Then, the intensity of building energy consumption for each of the proposed strategies were calculated and the energy rating was determined for each.

The results showed that the replacement of external shading instead of internal shading had the least amount of savings and had no effect on the change in energy rating and the use of a combination of double glazing instead of single-walled and thermal insulation in the outer wall of the building while upgrading to the classification, the optimal suggested mode. Finally, the results of this study showed that in the case of accurate simulation of existing buildings and then validation the effects of different strategies on energy rating and consumption can be predicted accurately.