[BLDG-SIM] hornets nest?

[John P. Karasaki, P.E.]

Mark,
 
I brought this issue up earlier last year and didn't see much dust fly.
Jeff Hirsch was kind enough to post what was going on.
 
PowerDoe hasn't been very useful for us.  Our buildings tend to be fairly
large with alot of detail, so it is easy to bring PowerDoe to a crawl on
both the P-pro 200 and PIII 300 machines we have.
 
I'm very happy with what Jeff has done with DOE 2.2 and am even happier that
he is supporting and advancing it.  I don't think DOE would be able to do as
good a job as Jeff has done.  They tend to take on too large chunks at a
time and complicate things.
 
It would be nice if DOE provided grants or other funding for private
developers to continue work on DOE 2.2.  However, I don't see this is
plausible since they have spent thousands (millions?) on EnergyPlus already.
I don't think it's likely that anything which competes with EnergyPlus will
see any government funding.  And even though I'm typically an optimist, I
don't think that even a letter from everyone on this list, or every DOE2
user in the world would change their minds and direction.  Hopefully, I'll
be proven wrong.
 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Case [mailto:mcase at etcgrp.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2000 2:09 PM
To: BLDG-SIM at gard.com
Subject: [BLDG-SIM] hornets nest?


Most of you are undoubtedly aware of the recent controversy over DOE2.2
PowerDoe and EnergyPlus. I know that many people on this list are actively
involved in one or more of these programs. 
I think this list is as good a place as any to start a serious discussion
about where things are going, why, and how we (users of the tools) feel
about these things. 
 
I'll start by boldly stating that I don't believe EnergyPlus will provide a
truly useful (on-the-ground useful) tool for many years to come. The history
of DOE and the national labs in creating and releasing such software is not
very good.  
Are the labs and developers trying to create a product useable in a
competitive design consulting world? The last thing we need is another
arcane simulation package with no front end or post processor - been there,
done that. Perhaps new algorithyms and advanced coding are needed but
without the interface they won't help me at all. I'd rather use the `older'
ones and keep the ability to show designers what I'm doing. 
 
One more comment and question - the DOE is spending our money to create new
code and have arguably abandoned the multi-million dollar investment in
previous DOE2.x developent. Is this the best use of taxpayer money?
 
Come on everybody - don't be afraid to weigh-in on this - let's hear your
thoughts!


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