Verification of the Use of Hybrid Weather Files for Concurrent Assessment of Space Heating and Indoor Overheating

Balanced consideration of energy use and thermal comfort performance in buildings is warranted to mitigate and adapt to climate change simultaneously in the UK, which necessitates the assessment of both space heating requirements and indoor overheating risk. In addition to heating efficiency, overheating risk assessment is in the process of becoming fully mandatory in building regulations, however, weather files of different types are needed for the evaluation of the two performance metrics via building energy modelling. This paper proposes a method of using hybrid weather data to facilitate concurrent heating and overheating assessment. Through two case studies (domestic and school buildings), it is demonstrated that adopting hybrid weather files can be accurate, time-saving and enable consistent analysis of the interplay between winter heating and summer overheating.