Simplified Geometric Processing of Solar Radiation for Improved Data-Driven Modelling of Short-Term Energy & Comfort Performance in Buildings

This paper reviews different approaches to integrate solar radiation into data-driven energy models of buildings. A geometrical model is proposed to project solar radiation data over specific wall and window orientations. The proposed method is based on well-known engineering formulae, which is adapted for its application jointly with a short-term data-driven energy performance model. The suggested approach is tested over data from an existing building in Singapore, where the solar model is coupled with an ARX model. Overall, the model performs well, with one-hour ahead predictions with MAE in the range of 0.12-0.14 °C in the modeled rooms. The correction of solar radiation improves correlation with regards to this variable by 20%.