Building Simulations

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Work collaboratively to find easier, more accurate and better ways to model, predict and verify a home's energy consumption.

Members: 63
Latest Activity: Mar 18

I spent many years modeling energy use in buildings using DOE2 and have modeled millions of square feet of commercial buildings and am quite familiar with that program's limitations. I'll admit up front that I am not a fan of DOE2. I much prefer continuous models that are object oriented. I do not like models that are based on discrete hourly approximations, although I understand why we sometimes need them in the short term.
Since coming to work for an electric electric utility 12 years ago, I have been analyzing commercial and residential building energy consumption by plotting average Watts/Ft2 (or Watts/m2) verses average monthly temperature that I obtain from monthly utility billing data. The resulting graphs are much more useful than the single number that is produced by EnergySTAR's Portfolio manager. The graph readily illustrates energy conservation potential, indicates which system is using the most energy (heating, building envelope, cooling, reheat or baseload), and is able to verify and quantifty improvements in energy performance after only one month of improvements being made to a facility. I'm happy to share this approach with any other building scientists that are interested.
I have also been using Matlab and Simulink to create a dynamic models of residential building's heating and cooling system. The results are quite interesting. My current model includes the effects of temperature setback on interior building materials and air temperatures. I will also be adding electric heat pumps to see how their auxilliary electric heaters respond to agressive temperature setbacks and to variations in outside air temperatures. I am trying to add mass effect of exterior surfaces to mimic those systems as well.

Discussion Forum

Trying to find %age energy saving from variety of upgrades in 10K sf multifamily house 4 Replies

I'm trying to figure out %age of energy savings from a variety of upgrades in a 10,000 sf building that has had deferred maintenance and a disfunctional heating system.I'm using Energy Pro software…Continue

Started by George M. Matthews. Last reply by Guy DuBois Mar 18.

Using Average Monthly Temperature to Model Home Energy Use 16 Replies

Discuss how monthly electric and gas billing data can be combined with average monthly temperature data to model a building's energy use, quantify energy conservation opportunities and verify…Continue

Started by James White. Last reply by James White Dec 28, 2012.

How about simulation in the multifamily context? 6 Replies

We'd like to hear from you on how the topic of this group applies in the context of multifamily buildings---> here

Started by Evan Mills. Last reply by Don Hynek Jan 23, 2012.

Modeling Domestic Hot Water Systems 1 Reply

This discussion forum is to attempt to answer Steve's question regarding better ways to model domestic hot water systems. Here is his question. "Things appear rather quiet over here in Building…Continue

Started by James White. Last reply by Steve Waclo Nov 24, 2010.

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Comment by Sean Feurtado on September 6, 2012 at 11:31am: I'm getting the hang of this program! But still lost on the plug load analysis. Here is the block load Analysis I did this morning (30 minutes- start to finish)

Comment by Sean Feurtado on September 6, 2012 at 10:05am: I am going to run a separate simulation on a model I do have bill data for, the issue is that the take offs are block zones, I wanted to run a Room by room analysis so I used a floor floor plan I had. Here is a the report from open studio legacy. The main issue is with the reports is my site energy use and modeling internal plug loads in legacy, openstudio I think has more flexibility but i want to understand legacy first. Maybe I should add a discussion instead of comments...I might set one up once I have an analysis for block vs. Room by Room summaries.

Comment by James White on September 5, 2012 at 5:34pm: Sean, it might help to first model an existing building, with actual data to compare your model results against. At least one with a year's worth of gas and electricity usage. You mention 216345.05 of Site Energy Usage. Is this total BTU/year?

I simulated millions of square feet of commercail buildings with DOE2 back in the 90's, but that was many moons ago. As I recall, one of the limitations I found with DOE2 was that is didn't handle air flow between zones very well. For example, if there was an exhaust air flow in a zone, the thermal model assumed the outside air entered that zone to be either heated or cooled, rather than drawing its air from surrounding rooms. I also seem to recall I could not assign a schedule to how infiltration entered the spaces, or relate infiltration to outside wind speeds, and had to rely on the outside air schedules in the HVAC system. I found that accurately modeling a residential home can be more difficult than accurately modeling a large commercial building. For these reason, your model might be more accurate if you used blocks instead of trying to accurately draw each room.

That being said, I like how SketchUp can provide a visual image of the surfaces and zones that are being modeled.

Keep us up to date on your progress.

Comment by David Williams on September 4, 2012 at 6:36pm: Can you describe your data acquisition method and sensor type/location. I just completed 24 months of hourly monitoring on a passive solar residential building and have a Very large excel file of data that has been evaluated in many different ways. This buildings' energy use was modeled using HOT 2000, prior to construction, in 1993. We have since modeled with Eplus and Greenbuild Studio, only to find that passive solar contributions are not recognized by Eplus & GbStudio.

Our wireless monitoring equipment measures hourly conditions for: all heating zone temps and humidy, gas to boiler & dhw, electric consumption , insolation, wind speed and direction. We have found that the actual building axillary energy requirements were not very well represented by conventional modeling tools, but found that HOT 2000 did a respectable job of identifying the 40% solar contribution that was disregarded by the other tools. Forty percent is a huge margin of error and I am wondering if anyone else has encountered the same issues that we have? This building is in CZ-6 with lots of sunny days>

Comment by Sean Feurtado on September 4, 2012 at 5:56pm: Well I got through the modeling portion of learning, now troubleshooting the reports and analysis inputs from the DOE2.2 engine. I decided to to do a detailed room by room load analysis, instead of a block load, it ended up giving me a 216345.05 Site Energy Usage for 2355 sqft?? I am wondering if doing a block load analysis will give me a smaller load. I also will run the simulation against Energy Pro5 and AutoDesk Green Building Studio to compare results.

-Stay Tuned

Comment by James White on September 4, 2012 at 12:01pm: Sounds like a fair question to me. I'd like to know more about using Sketch-Up with EnergyPlus.

Comment by Sean Feurtado on September 4, 2012 at 11:54am: Anyone else in this group use EnergyPlus Legacy plug-in for the Sketch up or any DOE-2.2 engines? Is this the best group to ask this question to?

Comment by James White on August 3, 2011 at 4:14pm: Although this is not a residential building, this graph tracks the reduction in energy consumption that we have been able to achieve for the headquarters building that I work in. The energy savings were achieved by adjusting the settings on the building control system to reduce the minimum air flow settings on the variable air volume boxes and turn off the fans during unoccupied hours.

Comment by James White on April 4, 2011 at 4:43pm: Documented 19% overall energy savings in nine residential homes that participated in our "Reduce Your Use" contest.

The winner reduced their January through March consumption by 35% by replacing their windows, sealing air leaks and turning off their hot tub.

Winners were determined imperically using the average monthly temperature approach described in this discussion forum. Baseline energy use was established based on a linear correlation of the home's normalized energy consumption for 2008-09 and 2009-10 winters. The actual energy consumed during the past three months was compared to two year's of average monthly energy use when the average temperature was below 45F.

Comment by Steve Waclo on November 23, 2010 at 1:32pm: Srikanth:

"It is not a picture, it is a video tutorial "

Forgive me. In my generation, movies, were "pictures" and now they have become videos ;-). I used the four arrows to bring the tutorial up to nearly full screen HD, and along with the excellent narrative as a guide should be able to more quickly come up to speed on the dashboard, review your content and provide some feedback.

BTW, if you listen very closely, you may hear the sound of eyeballs rolling as some folks consider the prospects of yet another "tool " for the industry :-). Looks pretty good to me so far, but I'll have a complete report on your desk after Thanksgiving.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention and have a wonderful holiday!

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