Bottom-up modelling of the Belgian residential building stock: impact of building stock descriptions

Abstract

Building stock modelling is a key element for the analysis of energy policy scenarios at an aggregate level, such as the integration of buildings in smart grids. To analyse the impact of new technologies and evaluate the dynamic behaviour at an aggregate level, bottom-up dynamic models are a prerequisite. Nevertheless, data on the building stock characteristics is scarce and assumptions need to be made. A comparison of two residential building stock typologies for Belgium is performed in this work with the aim of identifying their differences and investigating how variations in the representation of a building stock can influence the outcome of the model. For this purpose detailed models of the two typologies are implemented and simulated in Modelica using the IDEAS library. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the heat demand and dynamic behaviour of the stock implementations showed that the inherent differences in the descriptions lead to strong differences in the results, especially when conclusions must be made for specific building cases. This study highlights the need for more reliable and comprehensive data for the building stock, which is a prerequisite for qualitative bottom-up modelling.status: publishe