Solar Energy Compensation for Building Energy Saving with Thermal Comfort in a Cold Climate

This paper proposes an energy-saving strategy with assistance from solar thermal compensation for building energy systems. The target of the control strategy was to minimize energy consumption under thermal comfort constraints in buildings. First, the factors influential to indoor temperature in building environments were analyzed. Secondly, the internal and external factors, such as building materials; building orientation; window size; heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) facilities; blinding device; solar irradiation; wind speed; and outdoor temperature were used to construct a building model on the platform ENERGYPLUS (E+). A controller aiming to regulate the amount of solar irradiation was developed with the Building Controls Virtual Test Bed (BCVTB) tool. Afterward, the building performance under different strategies was tested by co-simulation using both the computational platforms, E+ and BCVTB. The optimum scheme achieved 30.6% energy savings while meeting the same comfort criterion of its competition strategy. The study verified that the proposed strategy of combined heating, ventilation, and air conditioning and blind control could realize the energy savings and comfort satisfaction at the same time. The proposed method provides a reference to the development of low-/zero-energy building concepts in the field.