Volume 61

Scalable energy retrofitting: A comparison between static and dynamic UBEM methods Mohammadhossein Alizadeh, Oleksii Pasichnyi

Abstract

The urgency of meeting 2030 climate goals has encouraged housing companies in Sweden, as one of the energy and carbon intensive sectors, to seek effective methods for analyzing and taking action on building retrofits. A key challenge in this process is the need for reliable and efficient tools to estimate the impact of energy conservation measures (ECMs), which are essential for informed renovation planning. Although various tools exist, many rely on simplified models, and there is a lack of expertise in their use. Dynamic simulation tools suffer from limited adaptability to large scale applications. These challenges have made it difficult for housing companies to implement ECMs effectively. This study benchmarks a simple template-based model used by Svenska Bostäder (SvB), __publicly owned rental buildings in Stockholm, Sweden__ against a detailed dynamic simulation called massive area Urban Building Energy Simulation (MUBES) by comparing their Thermal Energy Demand Intensity (TEDI) savings and simulation performance from applying three classical ECMs, namely triple-glazed window insulation, façade insulation, and heat recovery (HR). The results demonstrate that, although the static tool enables very fast estimations, it systematically overestimates energy savings across all ECMs, whereas the calibrated and validated dynamic simulations provide more consistent and moderate estimates of retrofit impacts. The calibration of MUBES was conducted manually and then validated against another dynamic simulation tool called City Energy Analyst (CEA).

Keywords Urban Building Energy Modeling, Building Energy Retrofitting, Static Model, Dynamic thermal simulation, Stockholm