[Bldg-sim] Commercial Reference Building Models in DOE2?

Joe Huang yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
Thu Jan 19 14:25:14 PST 2012


This is a topic of some interest to me for reasons both personal and technical.

On a personal level, I was involved in the original creation of these Commercial Reference 
Buildings, which were then known as
DOE's Benchmark Commercial Buildings, back in 2005 - 2007.  Since my knowledge base, 
especially for building models,
has been in DOE-2,  I created the first set of these building models in DOE-2.1E, which I 
then converted to EnergyPlus using a
doe2ep  (DOE-2 to EnergyPlus) program that I was also working on at the time.  Both sets 
of files were provided to DOE, NREL,
and PNNL at the time of my retirement from LBNL in June 2007.  NREL has continued to work 
on these building models, including
adding to or substituting new ones, so I have no idea how correlated are my original 
prototypes to those now on NREL's web site.

For those interested, the building models that I worked on in both DOE-2.1E and EnergyPlus 
(Version 2.2!) are available on my
Web site at   http://whiteboxtechnologies.com/download_07_DOE_prototype_files.htm
However, please keep in mind the caveat mentioned earlier, since I have not touched these 
files since 2007.

On a technical level, I think it would be a valuable contribution to the simulation 
community to have the DOE Reference Buildings
available for other simulation platforms besides EnergyPlus, in particular for 
eQUEST/DOE-2.2.   I have been contacted by  numerous
people over the past four years expressing the same interest, and I know of at least three 
efforts (not including Mark's :-) ) that are
trying to do this, i.e., recode the DOE Reference Buildings for eQUEST.  However, these 
have remained individual or university efforts,
whereas I think what's needed is a more sustained and vetted effort that would include 
harmonizing the inputs with EnergyPlus,
developing corresponding inputs where harmonization is impossible, as well as comparing 
the results to each other as well as to
measured data.   If these Reference Buildings are to be the industry default or starting 
point for building energy modeling, let's make
them as widely usable and robust as possible.

Joe

Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 108D
Moraga CA 94556
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
www.whiteboxtechnologies.com
(o) (925)388-0265
(c) (510)928-2683
"building energy simulations at your fingertips"


On 1/19/2012 1:10 PM, Campion Mark wrote:
>
> I do not believe they exist in eQUEST.  If they do, I would love to know since I spend 
> many hours inputting them into eQUEST!
>
> *From:*bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org 
> [mailto:bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] *On Behalf Of *Aleka Pappas
> *Sent:* Thursday, January 19, 2012 12:14 PM
> *To:* bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
> *Cc:* Field, Kristin
> *Subject:* [Bldg-sim] Commercial Reference Building Models in DOE2?
>
> Does anyone know if the DOE Commercial Reference Building models exist anywhere in DOE2/ 
> eQuest in addition to EnergyPlus?
>
> Thanks
> Aleka
>
> -- 
> *Aleka Pappas, P.E., LEED AP*
>
> Building Energy Engineer*
>
> GROUP14 ENGINEERING, INC. *
> Inspiring better buildings.
> 1325 E. 16th Ave, Denver, CO 80218
> Office: 303.861.2070 - Direct: 720.221.1082 - Cell: 720.635.0281
>
>
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