An Analysis of Energy Performance of a Commercial Building Using Energy Modeling:

A Review

As the human population grows and the industries develop, the demand in energy is rapidly
increasing. Building sector – as one of the user of electricity – is becoming a major part of the
total annual energy consumption. Moreover, in developed countries, building consume almost
40% of total energy usage and 30% of global green-house emissions yearly.

Building energy performance analysis is a study to improve the energy efficiency of a building
by determining the highest contributing factors towards energy consumption and proposing the
energy conservation measures. This research aims to analyze the highest energy consumption
factor of a medium rise commercial building and identify the energy conservation measures that
could contribute to energy saving without affecting the thermal comfort.

Methodology

Data Collection

The data obtained from the company is the general description of the building, envelope design
and location data of the building which were obtained from field measurement and observation
at the site. Besides that, some of the data were directly shared by the company from their
database.

Building General Description

Innoplex is a 7-storey building with gross floor areas of 21, 097 meter square. The building's
longer facades are facing towards Northeast and Southwest direction, which causes high solar
heat gain. The building has no shadings from its surrounding and very minimum window
overhang to provide protection from the sunshine. Considerable strong wind from the adjacent
Malacca Straits was also observed which causes high entry of outside air through doors and
window leaks.

Energy Modeling

Energy modeling is a simulation of a building that focuses on energy consumption, utility bills
and many other energy related items. Energy modeling is capable to predict the monthly energy
consumption and bills, predict annual energy cost, annual carbon emissions, compare different
efficiency options and determine payback from many options of saving measures.

In order to understand energy modeling, it is crucial to understand building simulation.

Building simulation is the process of using a computer to build a virtual construction of a

building. Simulation is performed by taking into consideration of various data inputs such as the
weather conditions data, building envelope and orientation, and building materials.
In order to simulate a building on a computer, the appropriate software is needed. These days,
hundreds of options are available where each software package has its advantages and
disadvantages. The software used in this study are SketchUp for the building model
development and Sefaira Architecture for energy analysis. Figure 1 shows the building in this
case study that was built using SketchUp software:

Fig. 1.

Innoplex building 3D model (front view)

D. Calculation of Overall Thermal Transfer Value

Overall thermal transfer value (OTTV) is an important parameter that needed to be determined
by energy designers or engineers. It indicates the overall amount of the thermal energy
transferred into the building which will affect the operation of cooling system.

E. Calculation of Building Energy Index

Building Energy Index (BEI) is the indicator used to monitor the performance of energy
consumption in buildings, acts as the reference point that provides the baseline for energy
performance comparison and also offers the best benchmarking on building energy utilization in
order to organize an effective energy-efficiency scheme in the future. It is the ratio of total
annual energy consumption of a building per total floor area of the building. The formula to
calculate BEI is as follows:

F. Energy-Saving Analysis
Based on the results from the energy modeling method, a cost saving analysis is developed in
order to determine the potential of cost saving from the potential energy efficiency measures
(EEMs) that being proposed. Basically, the cost saving analysis is affected by the proposed
EEMs from the findings of the highest energy usage contributing factors. Therefore, it must be
noted that the proposed energy efficiency measures must be accurate and relevant in order to
obtain accurate cost saving values.

Results and Discussion

Building Energy Performance (BEP) is influenced by many factors that determine the energy
consumption whether high or low. Arranging from the building types, building forms, orientation,
location, envelopes, passive designs and into the building internal environment such as
occupancy, lighting load density, equipment power density, and others, these factors have their
own correlation with the buildings energy performance.

To ensure a building comply with certain Standards or Code of Practices is a complicated job
that requires a lot of tedious tasks to be done. Therefore, it is better to undergo performance
based design of a building at the early design stage to avoid poor designs that would affect the
wastage of energy use after the building has existed. In this section, the results from the
simulation of the baseline data of the Innoplex building, a commercial building, are analyzed and
improvement strategies are designed to study the Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs)
impacts towards the BEI and annual cooling energy. The best strategies are chosen and the
energy saving analysis are discussed.

A. Baseline Analysis

Base case study was done to determine the highest energy consumption factor of the baseline
building model. The results were generated from the simulation program SketchUp Make 2017
and Sefaira SketchUp plugin. From the baseline data of the 3D Model of the Innoplex
building, Table 1 and Figure 2 shows the baseline energy assessment and breakdown results
respectively.
Fig. 2.

Baseline energy breakdown

Table I. Baseline energy assessment

The results in the Table 1 shows that the annual energy usage of the Innoplex building is
2,983,736 kWh/year and the building energy index would be 142 kWh/year/m2 of the gross floor
area of the building of 21, 070 m2. From, the energy breakdown chart, the building is cooling
dominated and makes up 42% of the overall building energy consumption.

Further insight of the cooling gains of the energy consumption, it was determined that
equipment and lighting contribute the most significant impact on cooling as shown in the Figure
3. The high value of power density of active gains such as electrical equipment and lighting
contribute to heat emission that would affect the cooling system to work and consume high
energy in order to maintain comfort level in the internal environment of the building in terms of
temperature, humidity and air flow rate.

Fig. 3.

Impact on cooling gains (envelope and active gains)

Focusing into the building envelope impact on cooling gains as in Figure 3, infiltration, glazing
conduction, wall conduction and roof conduction are the main contributors of the cooling loads.
These detailed energy breakdown segments of Figure 2 and Figure 3give the advantage to
clearly target the suitable ECMs to be implemented. By focusing on these key areas, the ECMs
that have the maximum impact on the overall building Energy Use Intensity (EUI) can be
designed which will translate into operational cost savings.

Further insight of the cooling gains of the energy consumption, it was determined that
equipment and lighting contribute the most significant impact on cooling as shown in the figure.
The high value of power density of active gains such as electrical equipment and lighting
contribute to heat emission that would affect the cooling system to work and consume high
energy in order to maintain comfort level in the internal environment of the building in terms of
temperature, humidity and air flow rate.

Focusing into the building envelope impact on cooling gains as in the figure, infiltration, glazing
conduction, wall conduction and roof conduction are the main contributors of the cooling loads.
These detailed energy breakdown segments give the advantage to clearly target the suitable
ECMs to be implemented. By focusing on these key areas, the ECMs that have the maximum
impact on the overall building Energy Use Intensity (EUI) can be designed which will translate
into operational cost savings.

B. Overall Thermal Transfer Value of Building Envelope

The overall thermal transfer value of the building for the baseline data was calculated using the
equation 1 and 2 stated in previous section following the MS 1525: 2014 standards. The result
that was obtained after calculation through Microsoft Excel is 47.78 W/m2 which is comply with
the standards, below 50 W/m2. This is important to ensure that the designs would be improved
further to obtain the maximum improvements.

C. Energy Conservation Measures

Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) which include improvements on each individual

element as well as combinations of various elements are designed to determine the best saving
strategies. This ECMs present a variety of options that can be implemented one by one over a
period of time. The sets of ECMs that had been designed are shown in Table 2 where the
strategies reflect upon the previous high impact contributors towards the cooling load.

ECMs have been designed in pairs of maximum and minimum improvements with codes of GZ,
IF, WL, RF, EQ, LG and CMB which in terms of glazing (windows) insulation, air infiltration rate
of building, wall insulation, roof insulation, electrical equipment power density, lighting power
density and combination of multiple ECMs respectively. The properties of insulation of the
ECMs are designed based on the available products in the market such as the window film,
glass mineral wool based Ecowool board, and Flatroof Lite roof insulation which is from the
brands Enerlogic, PGF Insulation and Rockwool respectively. The other ECMs are designs
based on the better practices stated in Standards MS 1525:2014 and ASHRAE 90.1: 2013.
D. Energy Saving Analysis

The simulation results showed that there is significant amount of energy that can be saved
through various ECMs. The maximum improvement of BEI (52.82%) and maximum
improvement in annual cooling energy (36.44%) as compared to the baseline is achieved when
the following strategies are implemented:

All doors and windows are fitted with weather strips

All external glazing to be fitted with Low-E (low emissivity) window film:

The exposed roof area to be fitted with insulation:

The exposed wall area and the aluminum cladding to be fitted with insulation like insulation on
the roof, insulation on the walls and within the aluminum cladding helps prevent heat from
reaching the brick wall.

All equipment used in the building should be energy efficient equipment since energy efficient
equipment has low operating power, low standby power and reduced heat dissipation.

All lighting used in the building should be energy efficient lighting:

In addition, calculation of OTTV of the building envelope after the implementation of the
maximum improvement of the ECMs shows significant reduction of 27% to a value of 34.5
W/m2.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, this research had analyzed and proposed the strategies of Energy
Conservation Measures (ECMs) of commercial building using energy modeling method. Energy
modeling using simulation tools is an effective alternative way in doing energy performance
analysis. It can simulates and calculates the complex part of an energy analysis that would be
tedious to be done by using manual calculation. This research had determined the highest
energy consumption of a typical office building and determine the Building Energy Index (BEI).
This research also had integrated the calculation of Overall Thermal Transfer Value (OTTV) of
the building envelope and comply with the Standards MS 1525: 20 14. From the analysis, the
research is able to perform energy saving analysis and contribute to 52.82% of saving in terms
of BEI and 36.44% of saving in term of annual cooling energy. Finally, this research can be a
guideline for a performance based design of a commercial building with several improvements.
There are several recommendations for future work in order to improve the current research.
First, the analysis could be coupled with sta