Establishing and assessing impact of energy conservation strategies on heating and cooling loads as early as possible in the design process provides valuable information for low-energy design and ensures optimum system choice and performance. Once you understand the internal loads at the early stages, detailed calculations can determine plant sizing and room air supply rates.
An understanding of heating and cooling requirements, alongside heat distribution and air movement also enables good thermal occupant comfort to be ensured. A key element of internal occupant satisfaction, thermal comfort should be a key parameter to interrogate right from early design stages.
The IES VE-Toolkits offer the capability to produce indicative building loads figures (ASHRAE and CIBSE) right from the earliest stages, while VE-Gaia and VE-Pro enable progressively more detailed results, based on real building data, to be produced.
Key thermal comfort metrics can be taken into account within many of the early assessment capabilities offered by the VE-Toolkits and VE-Gaia, such as the Climate Energy Index, while within VE-Pro dynamic thermal analysis combined with macro and micro airflow capabilities enables more detailed consideration and fine-tuning.
