Energy and Buildings 38 (2006) 582–587

www.elsevier.com/locate/enbuild

Experimental estimation of building energy performance

by robust regression
Cristian Ghiaus *
Laboratoire d’Études des Phénoménes de Transfert Appliqués au Bâtiment,
Univeristé de La Rochelle, Av. M. Crépeau, 17000 La Rochelle, France
Received 3 May 2005; received in revised form 24 August 2005; accepted 26 August 2005

Abstract
Estimation of energy performance indexes, like the heating curve or the energy signature, requires robust regression of the heating losses on the
outdoor temperature. The solution proposed in this paper is to use the range between the 1st and the 3rd quartile of the quantile–quantile (q–q) plot
to check if the heating losses and the outdoor temperature have the same distribution and, if yes, to perform the regression in this range of the q–q
plot. The result is a model that conserves its prediction performance for data sets of the outdoor temperature different of those used for parameter
identification. The robust model gives the overall heat transfer coefficient and the base temperature, and it may be used to estimate the energy
consumption for data sets of the outdoor temperature coming from different time—space locations.
# 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Parameter identification; Quantile–quantile plot; U-value; Energy signature; Heating curve; Energy audit

1. Introduction does not detect the influence of building design, operation,

Energy performance assessment is done by using one or a
combination of three types of procedures [1]:

energy consumption calculation based on data collected by
energy auditors in field studies,

energy performance estimation by using the energy bills,

energy measurement performed continuously or in cam-
paigns.
The first procedure, energy consumption calculation, is
basically similar to design methods [2,3]. Therefore, it is very
sensitive to the estimation of the physical properties and
geometrical dimensions of the building components and to the
assumptions made concerning the building operation. None-
theless, the inspection of the building allows the auditor to
deliver a diagnosis. The second method, energy performance
based on bills, uses, usually, monthly meter readings [4]. The
influence of any phenomenon having dynamics faster than 1
month is averaged. The simplest and the most used energy
index based on bills, energy consumption by the unit of surface,
* Tel.: +33 5 4645 7259; fax: +33 5 4645 8241.
E-mail address: cristian.ghiaus@univ-lr.fr.
0378-7788/$ – see front matter # 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2005.08.014
comfort conditions or climate on energy performance [5]. The
third approach is based on measurement; it uses an identifica-
tion procedure to find out the parameters of a proposed model.
Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) facilitate
energy monitoring and real time performance assessment on
short time intervals, typically 10 min to 1 h [6,7]. They may be
used for on-line energy audits to estimate the energy signature,
which may be corroborated with field investigation [1,4,8–11].
An important problem in applying this method is that on short
time intervals the data may be less correlated due to the
influence of random, non-measured disturbances like occu-
pancy, ventilation rates and solar gains that do not follow a
normal (Gaussian) distribution. In this case, a robust procedure
is needed to correctly identify the parameters of the models.
The models used in identification methods are static or
dynamic. A parameter that is usually identified in both
approaches is the overall heat transfer coefficient, or the U-
value [12,13]. Dynamic models use parameter identification of
ARX or ARMAX models [14] or black box models like
artificial neural networks [15–17]. Further developments use
the neural networks to determine the total heat loss coefficient
and thermal mass [18,19].
Statistical analysis of the global energy consumption
obtained from bills shows that the energy consumption may
 C. Ghiaus / Energy and Buildings 38 (2006) 582–587 583

be predicted within 90% confidence interval only with the
outdoor temperature [13,20,21]. Simplified static models use
the regression of energy consumption over the climatic data to
obtain an energy signature [22–24].
The energy signature of the building is related to the overall
heat loss coefficient of the building, U-value, which is the mean
thermal transmittance through building envelope to the external
environment by conduction and by ventilation [2,3]. It is widely
used as a thermal performance index for the envelope, although
its appropriateness for air-conditioned buildings is questionable
[25]. The overall thermal resistance (R-value) or thermal
conductance (U-value) of the components of the buildings can
be calculated from the thermal properties of the materials [26].
If the information about the building characteristics is
available, the global U-value can be estimated and used for
the simulation of the energy performance of the whole building
[2]. A similar approach may be used in energy auditing: the
energy consumption is evaluated based on building character-
istics and a diagnosis is issued [27].
The static models usually express the heating and cooling
load as a function of the outdoor temperature [10,26]. Statistical
methods were widely used to find out the energy signature;
these methods need robust estimation when the correlation is
weak [4,6,28–32].
2. Relation between outdoor temperature and
energy loss
The rate of heating load of the building is:
qh ¼ KðTo  Ti Þ  qg (1)
In thermally controlled buildings, the indoor temperature, Ti,
is quasi-constant. Heating is needed only when the outdoor
temperature is lower than the base temperature. The rate of
energy load of the building is then:
qh ¼ K½To  Tb dh (3)
with


1 if To < Tb
dh ¼ : (4)
0 if To  Tb
The energy loss of the building during the time interval
(t2  t1) is then:
Z t2
Qh ¼ K½To ðtÞ  Tb dh dt: (5)
t1
If we consider the time interval (t2  t1) of 1 h and take the
mean value of K during this interval, Kh, then the energy losses
during an hour are a function of the outdoor temperature:
Q ¼ Kh ðtÞ½To ðtÞ  Tb ðtÞ  1 h: (6)
In real buildings both Kh and Tb vary in time. Note that in
Eqs. (1)–(3) the heating losses are negative and the cooling
losses are positive. Representing the heating load, Q, as a
function of the outdoor temperature will result in a cloud of
data. Fig. 1 presents the results of thermal simulation of a fully
air-conditioned building in two different climatic conditions: in
Moscow, Russia, and in Rome, Italy. By using linear regression,
the data cloud may be approximated by the linear expression:

where K, the global heat loss coefficient of the building, takes Q ¼ b0 þ b1 T o : (7)
into account the transmission and the ventilation heat losses, To
is the outdoor temperature, Ti is the uniform internal From Eqs. (6) and (7), we obtain the global heat loss
temperature of a building zone, and qg is the heat gains from coefficient of the building:
sun, internal sources (e.g. occupants, lights) and other zones Kh ¼ b1 (8)
[2,33]. More generally, qg may include the effects of thermal
and the base temperature, i.e. the outdoor temperature for which
inertia, which makes Eq. (1) valid in dynamic regime. The
the heat load is zero:
outdoor temperature for which the building at indoor
temperature Ti is in thermal balance with its environment, b0
Tb ¼ : (9)
without heating or cooling, is called balance temperature and is b1
related to the heat gains:
Table 1 shows the results obtained for an office building
qg ¼ KðTb  Ti Þ: (2) with a glass, south oriented façade located in Moscow, Rome,

Fig. 1. Heating and cooling losses as a function of the outdoor temperature for a fully air-conditioned office building located in: (a) Moscow and Russia and (b) Rome
and Italy.
584 C. Ghiaus / Energy and Buildings 38 (2006) 582–587

Table 1
Regression coefficients, global heat loss coefficient and base temperature for an
example office building in different locations
Latitude (8) b0 b1 K (W/K) Tb (8C)
Moscow 55.7 13939 722 722 19.3
Rome 41.8 13041 740 740 17.6
Vienna 48.2 14034 789 789 17.8
Munich 48.1 13444 773 773 17.4
Paris 48.8 14053 841 841 17.5

Vienna, Munich and Paris. The variation of the global heat loss
coefficient and of the base temperature are due to wind and
solar gains.

3. Energy estimation by using the heating load

By using linear regression, it is found a relationship between

two variables by fitting a linear model to observed data. If the
variable y has a normal distribution with mean my and variance
Fig. 2. Obtaining energy consumption from heating load and frequency dis-
sy, the least square regression line, y=b0 + b1x, is an estimate of tribution.
the true regression line, my = b0 + b1x, which describes how the
mean response my changes with x [34]. panel presents the histogram of the outdoor temperature
The regression model of Q as a function of To and the constructed using bins of 1 8C. The energy consumption is
frequency of occurrences of To may be used to estimate the estimated by multiplying the numbers of occurrences in a bin
energy consumption. Since the observed data for Q vary about with the mean value of the heating load for that bin and then by
their mean mQ, if we consider the frequency occurrences of the adding these products.
outdoor temperature in bins of Tbin, the energy consumption is Table 2 shows the relative errors obtained between the total
the sum of the products between Q(To) and the number of energy consumption and its estimation by using the heating
occurrences of To, F(To), in the bin delimited by the interval load curve calculated by regression for a simulated office
[To  Tbin/2, To + Tbin/2]: building. The regression of the heating load on the outdoor
temperature was calculated by locating the building in Paris.
X
Tb The energy consumption was then estimated for the same office
Qtot ¼ QðTo ÞFðTo Þ; (10) building in different locations. The last row of Table 2 shows
T0 ¼To min
typical differences between the real energy consumption and
the estimation obtained by using the experimental heating load
where curve; the relative error for the same weather data is less then

 2%. When the heating load curve determined for a set of data
1 3 5
To 2 To min þ Tbin ; To min þ Tbin ; To min þ Tbin ; . . . ; Tb : (in this case Paris) is used to estimate the energy consumption
2 2 2
for another location (e.g. Munich, Vienna, Rome or Moscow),
Fig. 2 shows in the upper panel the cloud of data of the errors are larger, but still less than 10%. The errors are
energy consumption for heating during the working hours smaller for nighttime when there are no solar gains.
(9:00–17:00 h) for a simulated office building. Each point
represents the energy consumption for an hour and the mean 4. Conditions of application and limits of ordinary
outdoor temperature during that hour. The heating load, regression
Q = Kh[uo  ub]  1 h, is obtained by regression. The lower
The assumptions made for linear regression are that the
Table 2
outdoor temperature, To, has a normal distribution and that the
Relative errors between the real energy consumption for heating and its
estimation by using experimental heating load curve calculated for Paris by heat load, Q, is a random variable of mean mQ = b0 + b1To and
ordinary regression and by robust regression homogeneous variance s2. These conditions may be synthe-
sized in [34]:
Latitude (8) Ordinary regression Robust regression
The random variables Q are independent
enight (%) eday (%) enight (%) eday (%)
Moscow 55.7 3.0 3.4 2.8 2.4 of mean mQ ¼ b0 þ b1 To (11)
Rome 41.8 5.3 – 1.6 –
Vienna 48.2 1.5 10.4 1.9 1.0 and variance s2.
Munich 48.1 6.2 3.6 2.5 2.9
Conditions (11) imply that the residuals of the regressions
Paris 48.8 0.2 1.5 2.3 2.5
should have a normal distribution of zero mean.
 C. Ghiaus / Energy and Buildings 38 (2006) 582–587 585

Fig. 3. Outdoor temperature and the heating load have the same statistical distribution. (a) histogram and (b) quantile–quantile plot.

Over a long period of time, the statistical distribution of the as

outdoor temperature, To(t), is normal (or Gaussian). If the
building if fully air conditioned, if the internal gains ðT  mT ÞT  ðQ  mQ Þ
bT ¼ (14)
(occupation) and the ventilation rates are independent random ðT  mT ÞT  ðT  mT Þ
variables having a normal distribution, and if the indoor tem-
perature is controlled within a narrow range, then the energy load and
(heating and cooling) has also a normal distribution. Fig. 3a aT ¼ m Q  bQ m T : (15)
illustrates this case; after being normalized so that they have
T
zero mean and unity variance, the distribution of the outdoor An example of estimation of Q ¼ ½ 1 To   ½ aT bT  for
temperature and the heat losses are almost identical. a real building is given in Fig. 5a:
The above conditions are not satisfied in real situations: the
building is not air-conditioned at a constant temperature for the Q ¼ 22:43 þ 1:47To : (16)
whole range of the outdoor temperature. Consequently, the
outdoor temperatures which correspond to the heating period On the other hand, if we want to answer the question what is
does not have a normal distribution (Fig. 2 lower panel and the outdoor temperature To for which the building is in thermal
Fig. 4a). At the tails, the distribution of the heat load does not balance for a given energy flow rate, Q, then we find out by
follow the distribution of the outdoor temperature. regression the coefficients of the equation:
The heating load is, in a first approximation, a linear
function of the random variable outdoor temperature, as To ¼ ½ 1 Q   ½ aQ bQ T (17)
indicated by Eqs. (6) and (7). The linear transformation will
change the mean and the variance but not the form of the
as
distribution. When x is vector of random values,
if y ¼ ½1 x  ½a bT ðQ  mQ ÞT  ðT  mT Þ
bQ ¼ (18)
then my ¼ a þ bmx (12) ðQ  mQ ÞT  ðQ  mQ Þ
and s y ¼ jbjs x and
where m and s represent the mean and the standard deviation of aQ ¼ m T  bQ m Q : (19)
the indices variables. If we want to find the answer to the
question what is the expected value of Q as a function of To, An example of estimation of To ¼ ½ 1 Q   ½ aQ bQ T for
then we use the least mean square to estimate the coefficients of a real building is given in Fig. 5a:
the equation:

Q ¼ ½1 To   ½ aT bT  T (13) To ¼ 9:99 þ 0:28Q: (20)

Fig. 4. Outdoor temperature and the heating load have partially the same statistical distribution. (a) histogram and (b) quantile–quantile plot.
586 C. Ghiaus / Energy and Buildings 38 (2006) 582–587

Fig. 5. Regression models on: (a) scatter plot and (b) quantile–quantile plot.

The correlation coefficient of the regressions (13) and (17) are:

is:
rT2o Q ¼ bTo b Q : (21)
For the example shown in Fig. 5a, by using the values from
(16) and (20), it results rT2o Q ¼ 0:41. This value shows a small
correlation between data indicating low confidence in the
model. Note that the model (13) will give good results for the
estimation of energy consumption by using Eq. (10) for the data
set on which it was calculated but the results will be much less
precise when used with other sets of outdoor temperature (see
Table 2).
5. Robust regression of heating load curve based
on q–q plot
A robust regression based on quantile–quantile plot is
proposed to mitigate this problem. The discussion of this
method is done on real data collected in a school building in La
Rochelle, France, during a month of heating. The school is
heated intermittently, with the daytime set-point of 20 8C and
the nighttime set-point of 15 8C. The data set considered in this
example is selected for daytime, from 10:00 to 17:00.
The points in a q–q plot represent quantiles of the data.
Quantiles indicate the number of elements of a random variable
that are in a given range. The kth quantile, Pk, is that value of the
random variable x having N values, say xk, which corresponds
to a cumulative frequency of Nk/n. The quantile is called
percentile for n = 100 [35]. The 25th and the 75th percentiles
are called the first and the third quartiles, respectively, and the
50th percentile is called the median [34]. If the points in a q–q
plot lie roughly on a line, then the distributions are the same,
whether normal or not. Fig. 3b presents the data from Fig. 3a in
a q–q plot with n = 100 (i.e. percentiles). It is clear that the two
sets of data are coming from the same distribution.
A robust estimation of the linear relation between the
outdoor temperature and the heat load may be done based on the
central region of the q–q plot by considering data between the
1st and the 3rd quartile. If the two distributions are the same for
this quantile range, then the coefficients of the model:
Q ¼ a þ bTo (22)
sQ
b¼ (23)
s To
and
a ¼ mTo  bmQ (24)
which represents the principal component axis in Fig. 5.
Eq. (24) is a direct result of the fact that Q is a function of the
random variable To and it is in accordance with the set of
Eqs. (12). In Fig. 5, the principal component axis (22) is located
between the regression models (13) and (17). Fig. 5b shows
that the model (22) approximates the q–q plot in the central
zone.
It is known from physical considerations that the relation
Q = f(To) is non linear for hot water heating systems equipped
with radiators due to the nonlinearity of the heat transfer by
convention and radiation:
Pi ¼ kSðTm  Ta Þn ; 1  n  1:5 (25)
where P is the heat flux of the radiators, k the global transfer
coefficient, S the total surface, Ta the ambient temperature and
Tm is the mean temperature of the hot water:
ðTs þ Tr Þ
Tm ¼ (26)
2
where Ts and Tr are the supply and the return hot water
temperature, respectively. The nonlinearity of the relation
Q = f(To) may be modeled by considering a quadratic function
of the type:
Q ¼ a2 þ b2 To þ c2 To2 : (27)
For the same reasons as above, a robust estimation of the
parameters of Eq. (27) can be done by using the data from the
q–q plot between the 1st and the 3rd quartile. For the data set
shown in Fig. 5, the model obtained is:
Q ¼ 20:35 þ 0:12To þ 0:15To2 : (28)
This model has a small slope for To = 5 8C which is the
design temperature for heating in La Rochelle, France, and a
higher slope for the base temperature of 12 8C.
 C. Ghiaus / Energy and Buildings 38 (2006) 582–587
When energy consumption is estimated by using Eq. (10),
the ordinary regression, Eqs. (13)–(15), gives relative errors of
0.5% for the data on which it was obtained and of about 5–10%
for different set of data (Table 2). The q–q regressions, Eqs. (22)
and (27), give the same relative error of 2–4% for the data set on
which it was obtained as well as on new data set (Table 2).
6. Conclusions
Many modern buildings are equipped with Building Energy
Management Systems (BEMS) that control the indoor tem-
perature and record the energy consumption and the outdoor
temperature. These data may be used to assess the energy
performance of the building, such as the heating load as a
function of the outdoor temperature. This relation may be used
to evaluate the overall heat transfer coefficient of the building
represented by the slope of the heating load, Kh = b1, divided by
the external surface, and the base temperature, Tb = b0/b1,
which is related to heat gains. The overall heat transfer
coefficient and the base temperature are simple concepts useful
in economic analysis of energy performance or in energy
labeling of buildings [1,36]. They are good indicators of the
design, execution and operation performance. The heating
load may be used to diagnose the energy performance of the
building in the same way as the energy signature [4] and to
make meteorological corrections of the energy consumption
[32].
The heating load obtained experimentally can be used
during the commissioning phase to check the design perfor-
mance against real data and during normal operation to
compare the building performance in different years.
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