Impact of building geometry description within district energy simulations

To assess the feasibility of district energy systems as well as to design them in an optimal way, districtenergy simulations are often deployed, requiring an accurate spatial and temporal quantification of thedistrict energy demand. Geographical information models and systems can provide input data toquantify the district energy demand, but the available levels of detail (LOD) of these data vary signifi-cantly between regions. Therefore, this work investigates the usability of LOD1 and LOD2 representationsas well as the impact of building geometry within district energy simulations, by quantifying the dif-ferences in geometrical and energy characteristics between five variants of LOD1 or LOD2 representa-tions. The most detailed LOD2 representation is thereby used as a reference. The results show that thesignificantly decreasing accuracy using LOD1 models may be compensated by assuming the roof shapefrom regional statistics. Also, aggregation of wall and roof components into a limited number of orien-tations significantly reduces si mulation time, while maintaining the accuracy. It is concluded thatgeographical information mo dels contain a significant amount of useful data, but the error that resultsfrom the deployed level of detail must be kept in mind when assessing the simulation results.

Publication year:2018