3A.3 Assessing summertime urban energy consumption in a semiarid urban environment: WRF(BEP+BEM)

Salamanca, Francisco, M. Georgescu, A. Mahalov, M. Moustaoui, M. Wang, and B. M. Svoma, Arizona State University

Evaluation of built environment energy demand is necessary in light of global projections of urban expansion. Of particular concern are rapidly expanding urban areas in environments where consumption requirements for cooling are excessive. We simulate urban air conditioning (AC) energy consumption for an extreme heat period during summertime over the semiarid Phoenix metropolitan area (PMA) with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model (V3.4.1) coupled to a multilayer building energy scheme. Observed total loads values supplied by an electric company were split into two parts, one linked to meteorology (i.e., AC consumption) that was compared to WRF simulation, and another to human behavior. WRF-simulated non-dimensional AC consumption profiles compared favorably to diurnal observations in terms of both amplitude and timing. The hourly ratio of AC to total energy consumption accounted for ∼53% of diurnally averaged total energy demand, ranging from ∼35% during early morning to ∼65% during evening hours. Assuming 65% of indoor volume is cooled for the PMA, the simulation results presented here are in excellent agreement with observationally derived AC consumption data. This methodology, which separates human from meteorological energy consumption, can be applied to assess energy requirements of other rapidly growing metropolitan areas.