Sympheny demand profiles methodology
The demand profiles in Sympheny are based on different sources depending on the Building Use. They are stored in three levels, each level contributes to the overall shape of the demand profile.
Demand Type: refer to the Energy Carrier. Space Heating and Cooling depend on a normalized weather profile, while the other profiles are stochastic, they depend on the time of use of different appliances.
Building Use: affects the shape of the profile. For example, an office building will generally be closed on weekends and less occupied in summer. While a hospital operates at high capacity throughout the year.
Building Age or Standard: is used to deduce an Energy Intensity (kWh/m2/year), to estimate annual demands in kWh, from the Energy Reference Area (m2). The SIA standards include values of peak-load in kW. When selecting SIA standards, profiles are slightly reshaped, to match the annual demand in kWh and the peak-load in kW.
In the database, all profiles are normalized for the annual energy demand, meaning the sum of annual energy demand is 1 kWh. Then the profile is “scaled”, meaning it is multiplied by the actual energy demand.
The demand profiles in Sympheny are based on different sources depending on the Building Use.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, an institute of applied research based in Germany https://www.fraunhofer.de/en.html provided data for:
Administration / Office
Hospitals
Multi-family House
Retail
Schools
Single-family House
Open-source data provided by Rutgers The State University of New Jersey https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/rfnp2d3kjp/1 provided profiles data for:
Hotel
Indoor Swimming Pool
Industry 2-shift Fabricated Metals
Industry Warehouse
Swiss buildings standards SIA380 and SIA 2024 provided additional data for the remaining profiles:
Assembly
Industry
Sports Center
Warehouse
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft profiles
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft residential profiles (Multi-family-house MFH, Single-family-house SFH) were generated using the SynPro tool in 2020 (https://synpro-lastprofile.de/ ). The 4 Non-residential were generated using their SyntoGHD tool in 2020: (synGHD – Synthetische Lastprofile) All profiles were generated using the weather data of Zürich, 2018 ( Zuerich_2018.csv).
Residential profiles
Multi-family-house MFH
The simulation is based on a renovated building constructed up until 1978 with a typical use of a small multi-family dwelling (up to 10 units). U-values for walls, windows and roof are 0.3 W/m2.K, 0.5 W/m2.K, respectively 0.2 W/m2.K.
The following parameters are used:
Window-to-wall ratio: 0.23
Area-to-volume ratio: 0.43
Set-points:
Heating: 20°C
Cooling: 24°C
Single-family-house SFH
The simulation is based on a one occupant renovated building constructed up until 1978. U-values for walls, windows and roof are 0.3 W/m2.K, 0.5 W/m2.K, respectively 0.2 W/m2.K.
The following parameters are used:
Window-to-wall ratio: 0.19
Area-to-volume ratio: 0.92
Set-points:
Heating: 20°C
Cooling: 24°C
Non-residential profiles
The simulation is based on the following building age classes:
Offices: 2002 until today
Hospitals, Restaurants, Schools and Shops: until 1978, renovated
The following parameters are used:
Set-points:
Heating: 20°C
Cooling: 26°C