MODELING HOURLY ENERGY USE IN COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS WITH FOURIER-SERIES FUNCTIONAL FORMS

Hourly energy use in commercial buildings shows periodic variation in daily and annual cycles. Moreover, the pattern of variation is such th at Fourier series functional forms provide one of the best approaches for modeling this behavior. Results from numerous case studies have de monstrated the power of Fourier series as a modeling tool to represent hourly energy use in commercial buildings. This paper describes the F ourier series approaches that have been developed for modeling energy use in commercial buildings and presents the results of application to data collected from many sites.