Okay, the moment we all were waiting for. And by we all I mean me. After some clear filler nonsense brought to you by Autodesk and someone featuring and Autodesk product (Ecotect), the event was closed out with an open discussion (a.k.a town hall meeting?) and presentation of the DOE road map and the unavailing of the long awaited EPGUI front-end to Energyplus brought to you by taxpayer money (DOE) and India (huh?). Previously featured in this post Before the EPGUI was demo’d, Amir Roth who has recently filled the position left by Dru Crawley, gave an opening statement on the current state of Energyplus and the development road map. Notable points from Amir from user feedback, all of which I can validate listed the following issues with Energyplus in no particular order. Speed Support Easy of use Lack of Interface Use in early concept design unclear < < (I could argue the other side of this one). Adding to that, key points were made about user requests for a GUI to be free ($) and open (open source). These are key items I will touch upon later.

The morning started off with a long awaited demonstration of a recent build of Bentleys energy analysis offering in the the form of AECOsim representing a MicroStation front-end with the powerful Energyplus back end (v4.0?). The long short of the demonstration led by Dru Crawley, formerly of the DOE building tools group, is that they have a strong offering for the industry which I plan on doing a full in depth review of the Beta copy that was made available. Thats all I can say. Release expected in the summer of this year. Look for more info on the site. This day can be summed up rather quickly. I spent 90% of my time on the “Systems” side moderated by Philip Haves of LBNL. This was an extremely interesting series of discussions that focused on a panel of developers and software companies representing the key players on the energy modeling industry discussing in detail the way that each of there applications model a variety of building systems and situations. The panel included representatives from IES , TRNSYS, EnergyPlus, eQuest and Trane Trace. The topics included the modeling of DOAS, Radiant Systems, Lighting, Natural Ventilation, Ground Coupled Systems, Solar Thermal, Campus … Continue reading →

I’ll skip the fluff and head straight to the meat of the day, but I should note one thing. I was anxious for this event like a child on Christmas Eve. I knew I would be confronted with some of the “rock stars” in the world of energy modeling. This may sound lame, but I have a history with the tools and the community and it was extremely exciting and rewarding to meet and hear speak some of these individuals including folks from NREL, LBNL, ARUP and AtilierTen. Notable speaker of the day was Shanta Tucker from AtelierTen. She represented to me a veteran of the modeling industry. Someone who worked on a full range of projects and systems types and understood the way it actual is. Very well spoken and confident, I didn’t have a chance to speak with her directly but her topics were excellent. The topic of “ASHRAE 90.1: Appendix G Design Model, ASHRAE 90.1: Appendix G Baseline & Design Model Differences ” was more like a war story of the way things are in the trenches. Workarounds are required and this was a resounding theme for the conference.