[Bldg-sim] Refurbishments: software for financial analysis

Sasa Pantic usrobotics011 at yahoo.com
Thu Jun 12 12:15:03 PDT 2014


Hi Francesco,

Canadian RETScreen spreadsheet based tool will do the job perfectly. You can also use it for other purposes as it has several modules. Free of charge, very easy to use, excellent tool and guys from NRCAN did an excellent job. You have various case studies included  to help you better understand the the tool.Please note that this is not a design tool but rather a decision making tool (direct you what technology to pursue). 

It uses heating degree method for energy consumption. There is a detailed methodology in pdf downloadable from the web site.
You can choose location of choice, building fabric( U value) above/below ground, set point temperatures ,zone dimensions, ACH etc. You can select up to 5 zones (if not mistaken)
Enter fuel rate, operation schedule, investment, inflation,  etc.
Compares proposed design vs base design
Outputs are cash flow diagram, investment payback time, energy consumption, GHG analysis
Note. Tool is very sensitive to  heating/cooling changeover temperature value so make a reasonable assumption (it affects length of heating/cooling season).

I was involved in energy efficiency project where existing public buildings  were refurbished ( old windows replaced by  PVC windows dbl glazed  low-e coated, insulation added e.g. added 5 cm of rockwool insulation, ACH reduced etc.). The idea was to understand energy reductions and investment payback time.  Now, big issue was what software should be used for this application as there were many buildings and very tight deadlines. We compared 2 tools. The same building divided into same number of zones , with same parameters  was simulated in TAS and RETscreen. 
Results revealed that difference between the two tools was up to cca. plus/minus 10% (TAS is more accurate but more time consuming to prepare a model than RETSCreen). The choice was to go with RETScreen. 

Hope this help.
The other similar tool is Retscreen`s US counterpart HOMER (but I think it deals only with renewable energy sources+ no free of charge).
Cheers,Sasa Pantic

--------------------------------------------
On Thu, 6/12/14, Francesco Passerini <fpasserini.tn at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: [Bldg-sim] Refurbishments: software for financial analysis
 To: bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org
 Date: Thursday, June 12, 2014, 12:46 PM
 
 I am
 interested in
 software that can be useful for the evaluation of building
 refurbishments, both
 from the technical point of view and from the financial
 point of view. Such a
 software could be used by ESCOs to evaluate what solutions
 are the best ones to
 maximize its profits. The software should consider financial
 parameters both
 among the input data and among the output data. Any
 suggestion, please?
 
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