Application of simulation on investigating the impact of space planning on energy efficiency in office buildings

This work explores the extent to which computer simulation can quantify the energy impact of the temporal aspects of occupants and systems operation as influenced by space planning in office buildings. These are often difficult to quantify empirically. It investigates 5 typical office layouts, their typical space use densities and different occupancy levels. The software packages used are the TAS (Thermal Analysis Software), Lightscape, and Excel. Although the capabilities of the simulations overcome many challenges found in empirical methods, the inputs required to simulate the temporal diversity of occupancy and systems operations remain huge simulation challenges. So do user environmental perceptions and behaviour on controls.