Welcome to Lesson 3 of the course “energy audit modeling”. In lesson 2 we identified the purpose and goals of using an energy model for an energy audit project. Lesson 3 is about how to create the energy model with accuracy and efficiency in mind.

First, I will present the important inputs to the energy model. Separating these inputs into categories will help to maintain accuracy in areas that most affect our results. Other strategies for accuracy will be addressed, along with strategies for simplifying the model and reducing the amount of time that it takes to create and run the simulation.

Gathering and entering values as inputs are how an energy model is created. Specific examples of these inputs will be presented later, but first I am going to suggest a way to organize the values before they are actually input into the program. The importance in creating these categories is to make sure accuracy is maintained in areas that are most important, and to save time by deciding upfront which values can simply be estimated.

The first category is made up of values that are specifically known already, or that can be looked up and verified. Some things about the building we will know very assuredly. Some of the EEMs that we have already identified will be very sensitive to certain input values, we put these in this category so that they can be verified for accuracy.

The roughly known values category are things that we don’t know exactly but have a good idea of how to estimate. The values here may also be looked up as industry standards, or compared to other buildings to make sure that we aren’t assuming something that is unreasonable. When putting items in this category we should be careful that it isn’t something that will directly affect the results of any of the EEMs.