The Centre for Net Zero High Density Buildings is a research partnership to develop, test and underpin delivery of identified new ‘green’ innovations for the built environment. Scene partnered with the University of Strathclyde and University of Edinburgh in Developing a Layered Testing Framework (DeLTeFrame) for Building Performance Simulation, to validate the ZUoS home energy model.
The framework comprises three layers:
1) inter-model comparison using well-documented archetypes (BESTEST);
2) empirical validation against well-defined, high-resolution test house data and
3) validation against large, low-resolution datasets.
This energy modelling software test and validation framework has been applied to Scene's ZUoS home energy modelling software to give ourselves and our customers confidence in the ability of the ZUoS software to generate representative home energy performance data. Developing and applying the test framework has led to a number of improvements to the ZUoS software to provide more reliable predictions of home energy use compared to detailed and stock-level empirical data, and the predictions of other modelling tools. It has also built confidence and capability within our team to test model performance and integrate a testing framework in the ZUoS software to support ongoing continuous improvement.