Building Information Modeling for Solar Energy Systems
Abstract
Building information modeling (BIM) can be used to save cost and time in the energy analysis of buildings and related energy systems. With this approach, the energy system of a building can be designed in detail at its early design stage, which offers many advantages with regard to the use of renewable energy resources and to the error reduction resulting from a higher availability of useful and well-structured data. However, many limitations related to BIM-based formats and to the compatibility between available BIM-based formats and building energy performance simulation software restrict the usability of this method. The present work brings three contributions. The first one is a review of the existing coupling methods between BIM-based formats and building energy performance simulation programs for building and HVAC as well as about the BIM-based solar components’ simulations. The second one is an extensive parametrization of BIM-based solar thermal collectors. Finally, a python-based intermediate tool to couple TRNSYS and BIM-based formats is developed and validated.