Optimization of the Energy Performance of a Low Energy House Based on Sensitivity Analysis

For buildings with for heating requirements, energy balance is based on the difference between two similarly large numbers (heat gain and heat loss) in which the calculation becomes increasingly sensitive to changes in parameters. The output of the hourly simulation method illustrates the temperature in “free-floating” mode, which unlike the requirement for heating provides better information on the thermal behavior of the building itself in order to model the dynamic response of the object to certain changes in the input data. For the purpose of the evaluation the minimum and maximum acceptable temperature and the area within the boundaries called comfort zone. In this paper a low energy house is evaluated in terms of energy performance and thermal comfort, where some parameters are altered in order to determine its sensitivity to fluctuations. The methodology is based on a sensitivity analysis (SA) and Monte Carlo simulation based on a stochastic random selection. Thermal comfort is evaluated using an adaptive thermal comfort.