Degree days for building energy management — presentation of a new data set

Abstract

Heating degree days are widely used in building energy management. For the construction of building performance lines, it is necessary to have the correct building base temperature with the meteorological station as close as possible to the building being monitored. In the UK, free degree day data is available on a monthly basis for 18 regions of the UK at a building base temperature of 15.5°C. This paper presents a new data set of degree days calculated for 77 regions, weekly and monthly, at a range of building base temperatures from 10.5°C to 20°C. The data is calculated using real hourly temperatures and is compared against degree days calculated using approximate equations. The data presented is free and is updated weekly at http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/degreedays.php Practical applications: Degree days are widely used in building energy management; however, they are often not used due to the lack of availability of data for different time intervals, for appropriate weather stations and at building base temperatures other than 15.5°C. This paper presents and discusses a data set at high spatial resolution (77 UK stations) at both weekly and monthly time intervals for building base temperatures from 10.5°C to 20°C. This resource is more accurate than traditional sources due to having been calculated from hourly Meteorological Office data rather than daily maximum and minimum temperatures. The data is available online, is updated weekly and in a form such that it can be dynamically linked in to building energy management programs.