What is the building base temperature?

The building base temperature is the outside temperature below which a building needs to be heated. The typical base temperature used for most buildings in the UK is 15.5°C - hence 15.5°C is the default value when you set up the building(s) you are energy monitoring in SMEasure.

Not all buildings will have a base temperature of 15.5°C, for example, a hospital is likely to use a higher base temperature such as 18.5°C because there will still be a heating demand for maintaining the comfort of patients until the outside temperature is above 18.5°C.

Therefore, the base temperature depends on the temperature the building is heated to and the amount of heat supplied from people and equipment. The base temperature can and does vary greatly. It can be as low as 10°C for a thermally well insulated building with large internal gains. Use of the wrong base temperature ruins the linearity of a well run building and will make benchmarking erroneous.