Is it fundamental to model the inter-building effect for reliable building energy simulations? Interaction with shading systems

In recent times, the inter-building effect has been deeply investigated because it can highly affect building energy performance. Thus, reliable energy simulations of a single building can require to model the effects of surrounding buildings. This can imply complex models, and consequently high computational burden. The study aims at investigating such phenomena with suitable simplifications by keeping high reliability. Two typical buildings of European cities, located in South Italy, are investigated with building models developed using DesignBuilder® and EnergyPlus. Dynamic energy simulations are performed by using different modeling approaches: detailed modeling, different shading systems, different shading setpoints, no shading, no inter-building effect and the combination no shading and no inter-building effect (simplest model). For each approach different simulation timesteps are considered. The coupling between EnergyPlus and MATLAB® is implemented for a comprehensive comparison of the performance indicators provided by the different approaches. The main goal is to identify the models that ensure the best tradeoff between accuracy and computational burden as well as to verify if these latter can reliably replace the most detailed model. The tradeoff models provide – compared to the most detailed one – mean bias error around 2% and reductions in simulation times around 46%, which can be considered an excellent tradeoff. Finally, the study proposes insights into building modeling to answer the question: Is it fundamental to model the inter-building effect for reliable energy simulations? [Display omitted] •Accurate building energy simulation can imply complex, time-expensive models.•Different modeling approaches are compared to trade-off accuracy and complexity.•Inter-building effect, shading type and use, simulation time steps are explored.•DesignBuilder®, EnergyPlus and MATLAB® are used as simulation/processing tools.•The approaches ensuring the best tradeoff accuracy-computational burden are found.