Reducing energy use within the building sector is vital to create sustainable cities and mitigate global warming. Urban building energy modelling (UBEM) is useful to evaluate energy demand and renovation potential in districts. In this paper, an archetypes-based calibration approach for UBEM is introduced to evaluate the effect of various timescales for energy data and detail of building-related data on the energy performance of multi-residential buildings. A case district in northern Sweden was used to identify the impact of various refurbishment strategies at district-scale.
The applicability of the archetypes-based calibration approach was validated by comparing the district model performance with high-resolution energy data. Calibrating the archetypes-based model with monthly resolution data showed a similar outcome as using higher-resolution data. Further, a district model with less archetypes can reduce modelling time and complexity, while performing similarly as a model consisting of more archetypes with higher detail. The results suggest that simplifications to UBEM can be used without compromising the performance accuracy and might facilitate district modelling in situations with data limitations.
The findings in this study contribute to the knowledge on UBEM of existing districts and energy efficiency measures’ impact on district-level energy performance.