Of vital importance across all design stages, understanding impact on energy performance is a key metric in sustainable design. However, to truly understand building energy use you must understand the interrelated dynamics of a building and its surroundings.
By taking a holistic approach all elements that affect energy use can be taken into account, with different methods and levels of detail required at different design stages – from ball park ‘am I moving in the right direction’ assessments to final compliance and certification calculations.
Elements such as the building’s shape, form, orientation and openings, is linked to the surrounding climate and its thermal, light and airflow properties. Detail on other elements such as use of space, occupancy levels, equipment use and HVAC system/renewable use must also be accounted for.
Energy modelling, in a scalable form, is included within all of IES’ tools; from the annual energy consumption figures produced by the free VE-Ware, to the advanced, in-depth calculations available from VE-Pro. At the core of these capabilities is the IES ApacheSim dynamic thermal simulation engine – offering an advanced mathematical way to model and analyse the thermal environment of a building by capturing the heat transfer process into and through it, as well as its thermal capacity.
This thermal understanding allows designers to assess and therefore improve building energy and environmental performance, as well as create a thermal friendly environment. In addition, the way IES’ tools share an integrated data model allows all aspects of energy consumption and its impact on and interrelationships with carbon footprint, thermal comfort, daylight, solar and other building performance metrics to be easily assessed.
