Tag Archives: simulation

Python for Energy Modelers – Part 3 – Simple Post-processing

Posted on by

Last time we looked at scripting the creation of many input files for a parametric study of a building energy concept. Now we will turn to the post-processing side of the energy modeling workflow. Often, a spreadsheet tool like Excel is a first choice for many analysis tasks. This is great for simple cases, but if the number of files or the amount of data is large or complex, Excel will cost you time and lead to errors. This is where you should turn to Python! Let’s look a concrete example, from a project I worked on a few months ago. What we needed to do was generate building load profiles for 3 stock building geometries. We were investigating 8 different internal loads (office, residential, etc.), 5 different insulation types, and various other parameters. After an input file generation script similar to last week’s, I had 384 TRNSYS input files! These were executed all over night, resulting in 384 output files. And extract from one of these output files is below; This file is a typical output file from TRNSYS, a tab-seperated ASCII text file with a single header line. What we have in each row is the time stamp … Continue reading →

The Holy Grail: Energyplus GUI with BIM Integration?

Posted on by

Could it be? The eQuest killer? The death of Trane Trace? Is this the long awaited graphical interface for Energyplus? After seeing some recent rumors stirring in some of the building simulation circles about a new GUI for Energyplus, I got to doing some digging on the web and came across this presentation by Philip Haves of LBNL. After reading through this presentation, which I’ll get to in a bit and realizing that Philip Haves is going to be speaking at the upcoming ASHRAE Energy Modeling: Tools for Designing High Performance Buildings Conference where interestingly enough a mysterious EPGUI tool will be showcased, it seems we may be on the brink of what was once thought to be only fairy tales. According to the presentation titled “Development of a GUI for EnergyPlus” LBNL has been working with a DOE funded team in creating a brand new GUI for Energyplus aimed at not only being simple and intuitive but also extremely effective and scalable. The development team includes: * LBNL * Infosys * Digital Alchemy * Arup * GARD * Taylor Engineering Some of the key features worth noting are: * Integration with BIM and CAD * SketchUp style geometry creation … Continue reading →

EnergyPlus Version 4.0 Available

Posted on by

The latest release of the EnergyPlus building energy simulation program, Version 4.0, is now available in versions for Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems. A few key new features include We have updated and extended capabilities throughout the existing building envelope, daylighting, and HVAC equipment and systems portions of the program. EnergyPlus V 4.0 is available at no cost from the EnergyPlus web site: www.energyplus.gov.