Use of Building Energy Simulation Software in Early-Stage of Design Process

Sammanfattning: In traditional planning process, energy analysts work on finalized architectural designs and have limited capability to amend inefficient energy features such as high aspect ratio. Energy efficiency being a major part of sustainable design, the need for performance-oriented design tools has become imminent. There is a wide range of energy simulation tools across the world. Crawley et al. (2005) proposes a plain comparison of the most common ones based on vendor-supplied information. The present report aims to identify simulation tools that can help architects making energy-efficient design decisions in early stage of building process and the most suitable programs will be tested on a standard case in Stockholm area with respect to their architecture, functionalities, usability and limitations.