Analysis of Typical Meteorological Year selection for energy simulation of building with daylight utilization

Selecting suitable weather data is the premise of getting valid conclusion from building energy simulation. By analyzing the generation process of Typical Meteorological Year (TMY), this paper points out that existing well-accepted TMY generation methodologies mainly emphasis the thermal aspect of climatic environment during their typicality selecting process. Light aspect has not been taken into consideration. A case study is carried out to explore whether there would be a divergence of conclusion when conducting daylight-related simulations with different TMY data. Performance metrics including Daylight Factor (DF), Daylight Autonomy (DA), Useful Daylight Index (UDI) and daylight illuminance distribution have been compared. The result indicates that for static metric as DF, the variation between using different TMY data is insignificant. However, for dynamic metrics such as DA, UDI and illuminance distribution, the divergence is obvious. Researchers are suggested to take caution of this effect when comparing simulation conclusions from different studies.