A full-scale empirical validation study applied to thermal simulation programs

A large-scale study for validating building energy simulation programs against measured data was undertaken within IEA ECB Annex 58 "Reliable building energy performance characterization based on full scale dynamic measurements". The study included 12 commercial and research programs from 15 organisations. The experimental data was gathered in two experiments conducted at the Fraunhofer IBP test site at Holzkirchen in Germany. The paper briefly summarises the methodology of the study, key aspects of the experiments and the main research outcomes. An important objective of the paper is to present lessons learned from the study, from the perspectives of experimentalists, modellers and data analysts, which may be of benefit in future empirical validation exercises.