Modeling Energy Use in the Oxford Science Building
Our goal is to find the contributing key factors which influence energy behavior in order to model energy consumption of the Oxford Science Building (OSB). The software used in order to create the model and apply the key parameters and schedules were EnergyPlus, OpenStudio, and SketchUp. Electricity usage data from OSB was taken from February–August of 2016. OSB’s energy consumption was simulated in hourly, daily, and monthly intervals. It was found that our model, which was highly reactive to changes in humidity, human activity, and temperature, slightly overestimated the hourly and monthly energy use, whereas it underestimated the daily data. The mean relative errors and standard deviations for monthly, daily, and hourly energy consumption were small, x ̅ = -1.79%, 2.78%, -2.15%, and s = 0.06, 0.04, 0.04, respectively. Some sources of error include: the simplified geometry and estimating the human activity and electrical equipment usage.