Residential Building Archetype and API Development for Urban-scale Building Energy Consumption Platform: A Case Study for Wuhan

Building energy consumption accounts for 30% of the overall energy end use worldwide. Urban scale building energy simulation can play an essential role in urbanization. It allows planners and policy makers to foresee the urbanization through the lens of energy performance. The aim of this research is to develop a cloud-based urban energy simulation platform and an API for Wuhan, China to provide design decision support for urban planning, new constructions as well as for building retrofits. First, baseline residential building energy models are created in EnergyPlus to represent typical building energy consumption in Wuhan. The baseline model simulation results are further validated using survey data from literature. Second, stochastic simulations are conducted to consider different design parameters and occupants' energy usage intensity scenarios, such as building enclosure, lighting power density, equipment power density, HVAC schedule, etc. A building energy consumption database is generated for typical building archetypes. Third, data-driven regression analysis is conducted to output current building energy consumption using simple high-level building information inputs, such as building age and building price/rent. Finally, a web-based urban energy platform and an interface are developed, which support further third-party application development.