Generating near-extreme Summer Reference Years for building performance simulation

At present, there is no universally accepted method for deriving near-extreme summer weather data for building performance simulation. Existing data sets such as the Design Summer Years (DSY) used in the UK to estimate summer discomfort in naturally ventilated and free running buildings have been criticised for being inconsistent with the corresponding Test Reference Years (TRY). This paper proposes a method for generating Summer Reference Years (SRY) by adjusting the TRY of a given site with meteorological data in order to represent near-extreme conditions. It takes as the starting point that the TRY is robust, being determined on a monthly basis from the most typical months. Initial simulations for the 14 UK TRY locations show promising results for determining building overheating with the SRY. Practical application: The proposed method for deriving near-extreme summer years from multi-year data and the corresponding ‘typical’ weather year (TRY) of a given site is applicable to locations worldwide and facilitates summer overheating assessment of naturally ventilated and free running buildings. The method helps to overcome the previous shortcomings of near-extreme summer year selection procedures by providing a clear relationship to the underlying TRY.