[Bldg-sim] [EnergyPlus_Support] Food for thought.... (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Eurek, John S NWO]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
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Many building control systems measure the outside air temperature, can the building's own measured outside air temperature be used?  If you assume that the building can also measure wet-bulb temperature this still leaves cloud cover & wind speed (I'm not sure what other factors are involved)

Maybe a person could use the build's measurements and splice in any remaining variables from actual annual data and if there are still gaps, fill in with average data.

This brings up a big question; is there a right or wrong way to do it? Any set standards?

-----Original Message-----
From: bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org [mailto:bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Haberl
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 9:51 PM
To: Joe Huang; EnergyPlus_Support at yahoogroups.com
Cc: bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: Re: [Bldg-sim] [EnergyPlus_Support] Food for thought....

Hello:

 

I hate to jump in this late in the conversation, but here are a few more papers that you might find useful:

 

Song, S., Haberl, J. 2008. "A Procedure for the Performance Evaluation of a New Commercial Building: Part I - Calibrated As-built Simulation",  ASHRAE Transactions-Research, Vol. 114, Pt. 2, pp. 375-388 (June ). 

 

Song, S., Haberl, J. 2008. "A Procedure for the Performance Evaluation of a New Commercial Building: Part II - Overall Methodology and Comparison of Results",  ASHRAE Transactions-Research, Vol. 114, Pt. 2, pp. 389 - 403 (June).

 

Haberl, J., Bou-Saada, T. 1998. "Procedures for Calibrating Hourly Simulation Models to Measured Building Energy and Environmental 

 

Data," ASME Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, Vol. 120, pp. 193 - 204 (August). 

 

Haberl, J., Abbas, M. 1998. "Development of Graphical Indices for Viewing Building Energy Data: Part 2," ASME Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, Vol. 120, pp. 162 - 167 (August). 

 

Haberl, J., Abbas, M. 1998. "Development of Graphical Indices for Viewing Building Energy Data: Part 1," ASME Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, Vol. 120, pp. 156 - 161 (August). 

 

Haberl, J., Bronson, D., Hinchey, S., O'Neal, D. 1993. "Graphical Tools to help Calibrate the DOE-2 Simulation Program to Non-weather Dependent Measured Loads," ASHRAE Journal, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 27 - 32 (January).

 

Bronson, D., Hinchey, S., Haberl, J., O'Neal, D. 1992. "A Procedure for Calibrating the DOE-2 Simulation Program to Non-Weather Dependent Loads," ASHRAE Transactions-Research, Vol. 98, Pt. 1, pp. 636 - 652 (January).

 

  Haberl, J., Bou-Saada, T., Soebarto, V., Reddy, T. 1998. "Use of Calibrated Simulation for the Evaluation of Residential Energy Conservation Options of Two Habitat for Humanity Houses in Houston, Texas," Proceedings of the 11th Symposium on Improving Building Systems in Hot and Humid Climates, Texas Building Energy Institute, Ft. Worth, Texas, pp. 1-15 (June).

 

In addition, there is ASHRAE research project 1404 by Abushakra and Reddy that is about to finish that has good advice on the use of short term data to predict long term energy use. Copies of the final report should be available shortly from Mike Vaughn.

 

Jeff

 

8=!  8=)  :=)  8=)  ;=)  8=)  8=(  8=)  8=()  8=)  8=|  8=)  :=')  8=)8=?

Jeff S. Haberl, Ph.D.,P.E., FASHRAE..............jhaberl at tamu.edu

Professor............................................................Office Ph: 979-845-6507

Department of Architecture.............................Lab Ph:979-845-6065

Energy Systems Laboratory.............................FAX: 979-862-2457

Texas A&M University.....................................77843-3581

College Station, Texas, USA, 77843..................URL:www.esl.tamu.edu

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________________________________

From: bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org [bldg-sim-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] on behalf of Joe Huang [yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com]
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 3:13 PM
To: EnergyPlus_Support at yahoogroups.com
Cc: bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: Re: [Bldg-sim] [EnergyPlus_Support] Food for thought....


Jim,

Sorry if I came off as a little smug.  You've actually put in words the main reason why I think building energy modelers have steered away from using historical weather data, which is simply that of  convenience, i.e., there are a lot of "typical year" weather files floating around, but getting hold of a usable historical year weather file takes a little more work.

For the study that I mentioned, Dru and I did not have to do anything because the SANSOM data set, available from NCDC, contained 25 years of historical weather files for 239 cities (same as TMY2s).

That was in 1996, and the availability of historical weather data has only increased exponentially since then, although the building energy modeling community seems curiously to not have followed. 
The most notable change, in my view, is NCDC's decision to put the entire ISH (Integrated Surface Hourly) data online in 2005, and then to make it free to all in 2011.  This means that the raw weather reports from major stations around the world ( ~ 1,500 in the US) are available stretching back to 1980. 

I've been working with the ISH for many years now, and am able to generate complete weather files from any ISH file within seconds, and have been providing that as a service to customers.  Sometime later this year, I'll be rolling out something on the Web, but for now, those interested can just send me an e-mail.

The idea that the ISH is of questionable quality is, in my view, rather backwards.  The ISH is a repository of the weather reports by the "official" weather stations around the world, so if you can't trust that, what can you trust?  

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 6/28/2012 11:48 AM, Jim Dirkes wrote: 

	  

	Dear Joe, 

	No fair! You  and Dru have been at the forefront energy modeling research for most of my adult life, and have a big head start. 

	My guess is that you spent a lot of time preparing the actual weather files for the research, however.  Unless I'm missing something, the ready availability of high quality (e.g., no big hunks of missing data) actual weather data has been pretty limited until recently.  With folk like Weather Analytics getting on board and making it pretty easy to get and inexpensive, it becomes a lot faster and lower cost than trying to clean some of the NOAA / NCDC data, not to mention getting good data for sites not in or near a major city. 

	Kudos for being way ahead of the industry curve (at least my own curve)!  It's getting easier to catch up! 

	p.s., Dru sent me that paper and I'll be reading it with interest very soon. 

	  

	From: Joe Huang [mailto:yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com] 
	Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 1:53 PM
	To: EnergyPlus_Support at yahoogroups.com <mailto:EnergyPlus_Support at yahoogroups.com> 
	Cc: Jim Dirkes; bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org <mailto:bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org> 
	Subject: Re: [EnergyPlus_Support] Food for thought.... 

	

	I've always thought it was a "no-brainer" to use actual weather data whenever you're comparing simulation results to actual consumption data.  Even with the earliest degree-day software such as 
	PRISM (Princeton Scorekeeping Method) in the 1980's, it was stressed to use the degree days 
	from the period of record, and not the long-term average, so I'm not sure why this (using actual
	year weather data) is such a revelation.
	
	The variation in total energy consumption of course depends a lot on the building characteristics.
	Back in 1996, Dru Crawley and I wrote a paper on "Does it matter which weather data you use in energy simulations?", for the ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings (it also appeared as two
	separate ASHRAE papers at around the same time) where we took some prototypical building models (Dru did commercial, I did residential) and ran them with various "typical year" weather files and also 25 years of historical data in 10-12 US locations. 
	
	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 6/28/2012 8:49 AM, Jim Dirkes wrote: 

	

	Dear Forums, 

	I am busy preparing a short talk for the Fall ASHRAE Energy Modeling Conference.  The topic is "An Approach for Calibrating Existing Building Energy Models to their Utility Consumption". 

	As part of the preparation, I will address the issue of how muc h difference might result in energy conservation measure savings predictions if you use actual weather data for the billing period versus TMY data.  

	To get a rough idea  how much variation there might be, I looked at Degree Days for a span of years.  What a variation! (for the city I'm studying at least) 

	I am not yet sure how that affects total energy consumption - you'll have to attend my presentation in Atlanta to find out J. 

	In the meantime, I am starting to think that existing building energy models should use actual weather, not TMY data.  Have any of you run similar comparisons for existing building models? 

	 

	

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Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE