Sensitivity analysis of visual and thermal parameters for energy savings: climatic variations

The objective of this research is to study the potential energy savings due to changes in thermal and visual set-points, by means of computer simulations and sensitivity analyses. The first part of the project consists in the creation of a computer model of a "shoebox" office as close as to the reality (i.e., an existing climate chamber on EPFL campus). The second part of the project involves computer simulations in terms of final energy consumption by varying thermal and visual parameters with the integration of two computer simulation softwares. The obtained data are treated by means of a sensitive analysis. This part of the study has in particular made it possible to define the importance of the parameters as regards their influence on the energy consumption of the building. The analysis is run for two different cities and climates: Madrid and Geneva.