Tag Archives: energy analysis

Python for Energy Modelers – Part 2 – Simple Pre-processing

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After a great introduction by Clayton Miller, let’s dig in and see how easy and powerful it is to mix a little Python into your simulation workflow!

Computers are fantastic at performing repetitive tasks, let them handle the boring stuff so you can focus on creating better models and reports. Now think about your simulation tool as an engineer; many simulation tools have one main input file which is executed by the tool, and out come a bunch of results files. We can think of this like a black box model, where we are not so concerned about the inner details. In fact, this model can be generalized to many simulation tools important for energy analysis and building performance design. From personal experience I use this “ASCII text file input – text file output” black box model for EnergyPlus, TRNSYS, and Radiance. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a general way to modify input files and process our output files automatically? This is the subject of this blog series! Continue reading →

Python for Energy Modelers – Part 1

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python energy modeler thinking

After reading the title for this post – I know what you may be thinking – “Hey, whoa, wait a second. I’m an engineer. The learning curve for programming is too steep. There’s no way I can become proficient without a huge time investment.”

I used to be the same way; fighting my way through excel spreadsheets and even dabbling in a few visual basic macros to help process the data going into and coming out of energy simulation programs. The reality is that there is a better way. Through discussions with a few prominent energy modelers at the Building Simulation 2011 conference in Sydney in November, I decided there just isn’t a ‘nudge’ out there to push more engineers and energy analysts towards basic proficiency in high level programming languages such as Python and Ruby. This post will be the first in a series which will help the average engineer get started with scripting languages, build a few practical skills which are directly applicable to pre and post processing of data for modeling purposes, and go through a couple of these scenarios from start to finish. I have engaged the assistance of energy modeling extraordinaire Marcus Jones to help out with future posts on the simulation scenarios which this stuff can be useful for. Continue reading →

New Existing Building Simulation Talking Head

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Howdy folks! Due to Alan extending a warm invitation to other energy modelers out there for blog submissions, I’m making my debut as the in-house existing building energy modeling expert (the title ‘expert ‘ is used lightly at this point as I still have a lot to learn – although anyone that has suffered through one or two model calibration processes should be considered seasoned). I would like to blog about my experiences learning the ropes of calibrated modeling for existing buildings and the applications of such models in transforming the market. Thanks Alan and hope you don’t regret this! The get things going in my first post, I’m just going to give a simple shout out to the Rocky Mountain Institute who has taken the lead in promoting the use of simulation in existing buildings. While the concept is not new, whole building calibrated energy models are seldom used in the retrofit process – either because of awareness, lack of training, cost/labor restrictions, or in many cases it’s simply not necessary. However, there is a growing demand for such services due to a few market and technology catalysts starting to gain momentum (which I’ll save for later posts). RMI … Continue reading →

Green Spaces Live – a Free gbXML Tool

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Hi everyone, my name is Neil Bulger and I am an energy modeler for a small design MP firm on the west coast in Oakland, CA. I’m happy to join the writing team here on the openRevit site. My focus and interest in energy modeling has been to find open-source tools that can both mold to the job required and providing enough information under the hood for engineers and owners to feel comfortable with the results. Today, I’d like to share a neat tool I found a while back called Greenspaceslive (greenspacelive.com). The tool is a plugin that works with Google Sketchup and allows a 3D model of a building to be tagged with surface types and assigned to spaces, building a gbXML file that can then be exported to a number of various software tools, such as Trane Trace or in California, EnergyPro used for code compliance. While this is a free tool that can create gbXML, which is fantastic, it is not without its holes, and it has some major ones. I honestly think this is a great tool, but for purposes of today, I will talk about the shortcomings and some advice. The way the program works … Continue reading →

Bentley AECOsim Energy Simulator Preview

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I recently had the chance to get my hands on a second beta version of Bentley’s new AECOsim Energy Simulator for building simulation. The version I tested was v08.11.07.78. The first time I had a chance to see AECOsim was at the ASHRAE BEM Conference where it was demonstrated by Dru Crawley. Soon after I received the first Beta which was not at a good state for review. This version however is at a point where it is worth previewing. The overview of the interface is that it is built into the Bentley Microstation platform offering a familiar CAD style interface with various 2D and 3D views for model creation. Right and Left click methods and tool bars will be familiar to Microstation users, but maybe not for others. A ribbon style main toolbar now part of most modern .NET Windows applications is also available in the interface to organize the various built-in utilities and menus. I only used the application for a short period of time, so it is possible my review may touch upon areas that I did not fully understand, in which case I will update this post should I find anything was incorrect due to my inexperience. Keep reading below for my full review.