Strategic energy planning decision-making from early design to detailed design stages

Increased uptake of sustainable energy systems (SES) is a key component of many national and regional policies aimed at addressing climate change, energy security and environmental sustainability. The appropriate application of SES in building projects is important to realise the aims of such strategic initiatives and support continued uptake. In many building projects key decisions that affect the applicability and optimal application of sustainable energy systems are made in the early design stages. These typically involve the balancing of site, resource, building function and cost effectiveness characteristics. As a building design develops the types of information available to inform decisions evolves from being mainly qualitative at the earliest design stages to being quantitative at later detailed design stages. This paper presents a framework for characterising this information and evaluating the suitability and impact of a range of SES in large new buildings. The framework combines qualitative and quantitative evaluation to inform strategic energy planning decision making at three stages of a buildings design development. By way of solar water heating and photovoltaic examples the structure of a multi-level online application developed to aid decision making in various design stages is presented.