BESTEST Validation

The benchmark of ALMABuild has been performed following the Building Energy Simulation Test (BESTEST) procedure, a validation methodology for whole building simulation software that has been developed by the Model Evaluation and Improvement International Energy Agency (IEA) Experts Groups in the first years of 1990s. Thanks to its systematic approach, the BESTEST procedure has been followed for the validation of the main whole building energy simulation programs, like TRNSYS, ESP-r, EnergyPlus and DeST. Moreover, this procedure has also been inserted in the Standard ASHRAE 140.

The BESTEST method consists in three different kinds of tests:

1. Analytical verification, in which software predictions are compared to analytical solutions for simple reference cases.
2. Empirical validation, in which the agreement between numerical predictions and measured real data is evaluated.
3. Comparative testing, in which the results obtained with a software are compared to the ones obtained with other reference software, in well-defined reference case.