Thermal Parameter Identification of Simplified Building Model with Electric Appliance Herie Park a, *, Marie Ruellan a , Adrien Bouvet b and Eric Monmasson a a SATIE CNRS UMR8026, b L2MGC, University of Cergy-Pontoise, Cergy-Pontoise, France (herie.park, marie.ruellan, adrien.bouvet, eric.monmasson) @u-cergy.fr Rachid Bennacer c c LMT CNRS UMR 8535 Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan Cachan, France rachid.bennacer@dgc.ens-cachan.fr Abstract— In order to reduce heat energy demand in residential building, thermal insulation and indoor air tightness become more important. However, in a well-insulated environment, internal heat gain caused by solar radiation, metabolism and losses of home electric appliance (i.e. refrigerator, lamp, television, etc.) can be dominant to home global energy management. To quantify and to modelize the heat gain due to home appliances, we begin experimental measurements in a well- insulated room. The first step in this work is the identification of the room. In this paper we suggest a 1R1C lumped parameter circuit which presents a building thermal model using thermal- electric analogy. Then, we identify the circuit components (the global thermal resistor and the global thermal capacitor) from the heat balance equation and experimental results. Based on the model and the obtained parameters, we simulate the indoor temperature of the model using Matlab/Simulink. To check its accuracy we compare the measured data and simulation results and calculate their error ratio. Keywords-power utilization; building thermal model; thermal parameters; electric appliance; indoor temperature I. INTRODUCTION As improving the quality of human life, building energy consumption and its CO 2 emission have continuously increased. In order to reduce the environmental impact of building, many countries strengthen their building regulations and codes [1]. Especially, European Union has launched the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) to lead all EU State Members to tighten their building energy regulations and to introduce energy certification schemes [2-3]. In addition, global scale standards by ISO and CEN, assessment tools and certification for sustainable building such as BREEAM, LEED, CASBEE, Passivhaus, Minérgie, Effinérgie, etc. are also being developed [4-5]. To achieve these requirements, several technical approaches are needed. For example, the Passivhaus institute, which developed one of the international building energy efficiency certification ‘Passivhaus’, suggests followed techniques [6]: compact form and super insulation, solar gain consideration for opening, shading and natural lighting, high- efficient window glazing and frames, air tightness of envelope, air and water heat exchanger, energy saving home appliances, etc. In low energy buildings, auxiliary heats by solar radiation, metabolism and domestic appliance losses, which are called as ‘internal gain’, can affect dominantly to home global energy management [8]. To research the influence of auxiliary heat gain in low energy building, we need to model a well-insulated building. Some previous literature introduced a thermal network method using thermal-electric analogy to present a building as an electric circuit [9-14]. Most of these building models are based on a heat balance equation. Using the equation, building thermal parameters (thermal resistance and thermal capacitance) as well as local conditions (outdoor/indoor temperature and internal gains by solar radiation, metabolic heat and electric appliances) can be adapted to the electric circuit components such as resistor, capacitor, voltage and current source. It allows estimating the indoor temperature and the heating/cooling energy demand of building. The purpose of this paper is to apply the simplest thermal model of well-insulated room and to identify its global thermal parameters using four lamps. There are no other heat sources except the lamps. The lamps affect to the indoor temperature and their power consumption data permit to estimate the temperature. For this, we suggest a first order RC lumped parameter circuit using thermal-electric analogy. Both the mathematical model and the physical model are discussed in the next section. In section III the experimental condition and the parameter identification method are presented. After the thermal parameters are estimated, the proposed model is implemented on Matlab/Simulink to simulate the indoor temperature in section IV. The obtained results are compared to the measured data to verify the accuracy of the model and of the identification method. Finally in section V the conclusions are drawn. II. FIRST ORDER RC LUMPED PARAMETER MODEL A. Mathematical model Consider a single zone model with an electric power source (see Fig.1). The heat balance equation is described from the 978-1-4673-0378-1/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE