Three most commonly used model are introduced: effective moisture penetration depth (EMPD) model; effective capacitance (EC) model and combined heat and moisture transfer (HAMT) model. The formulation foundation as well as strength and weakness of these three model are analyzed. Taking a small office building in Nanjing for example, the accuracy of EMPD is examined while predicting the indoor hygrothermal environment and yearly energy consumption based on the EnergyPlus platform. Reasons that account for the errors comparing with EC and HAMT are presented. Results show that among three models EMPD shows more similarities to HAMT than EC in terms of moisture and energy prediction with errors less than 5% and 8% respectively. Besides, EMPD runs several orders of magnitude more quickly than HAMT. So EMPD can be chosen to simulate buildings when taking both accuracy and speed into consideration. Some suggestions are proposed to further modify EMPD for a better accuracy.