[Equest-users] EnergyPlus--Quest Competitor or Natural Evolution

[Bill]

I work mostly in the existing buildings (non- or pre-"green) markets, but to
the extent green buildings don't live up to the promises is largely due to
operaitons, not design.  Many green buildings are more complex, and since
even more traditional buildings typically have significantly sub-optimal
operations, it is only logical that green buildings will suffer at least as
much when compared to expectations/simulation results.
 
Some interesting documentation of green building performance is available at
www.newbuildings.org.
 
As far as Energy Plus and eQuest, I only have experience with DOE-2 and
eQuest.  EnergyPlus should be superior since it was built using the best of
DOE-2 and BLAST.  IIRC, it was moving away from a transfer-function-based
simulation to a heat balance-based simulation.  This should also help it to
be superior in some circumstances.  DOE-2 derivative simulation tools are
generally weak at simulating suboptimal operations, and are very poor at
simulating certain controls improvements or retrocommissioning measures.  I
don't know how much better EnergyPlus is in this regard.
 
At any rate, because of federal funding, and that some (many/most?) federal
projects and organizations will only allow EnergyPlus, it seems certain that
EnergyPlus is the future.  My use of DOE-2 dates back to before there were
convenient interfaces and we dealt only with BDL and user-defined functions,
and we needed the stacks of documentation to know what we were doing.  I
certainly believe that as more interfaces for EnergyPlus are developed, more
students come out of school with knowledge of EnergyPlus, and more of us
learn EnergyPlus, it will see greater and greater use.
 
William E. Koran, P.E. 
Senior Engineer 
Q u E S T 
Quantum Energy Services and Technologies 
Web:  <http://www.quest-world.com/> www.quest-world.com 


  _____  

From: equest-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org
[mailto:equest-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of
Dan.Monaghan at bentley.com
Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2009 7:05 PM
To: equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: [Equest-users] EnergyPlus--Quest Competitor or Natural Evolution



Thanks  to all the people who responded to my question.

A few of you ask me to post the result from my very unscientific survey.

The list is  split  50%, 50% in their opinion that EnergyPlus will become a
natural transition to eQuest.

The basic sentiment is that eQuest is recognized to be less capable, but
faster and easier to use. 

However, almost all who responded recognized that  as the demand for
high-performance buildings grows, the ability to accurately predict energy
consumption, C02 emissions, occupant comfort and life cycle costs are  going
to become more important.  I read this to mean that the demand for detailed
analysis tools like EnergyPuls is likely to increase.

Someone asked me why Bentley cares. We believe that there's a hole in the
U.S. energy analysis/simulation market.  We believe, as this survey
indicates, that the tools available to U.S. designers seem to fall into two
camps. Tools that are easy-to-use, but inaccurate/incomplete. Or, tools that
are precise, but difficult to use and slow.  

Unfortunately, because of this we see:

 

1.      Many "green" building don't live up to the promises 

2.      Robust energy simulation is typically reserved for "special"
projects, or certain project types.

3.      Accurate energy analysis  is typically siloed, as oppose to
integrated into the design process 

As the leader in building engineering and analysis software or mission is
"sustaining the worlds infrastructure". As such we're working on solving
this problem,  <http://www.bentley.com/eps> www.bentley.com/eps.

Dan Monaghan | Global Marketing Manager
Building Performance Group

Bentley Systems, Incorporated

Phone: +1-410-207-5501| Skype: dmonaghan.skype
E-mail:  <mailto:christine.byrne at bentley.com> dan.monaghan at bentley.com |
URL:  <http://www.bentley.com> www.bentley.com
Address: Bentley | 40 Dunvegan Rd. | Baltimore| MD | 21228 | USA 

 <http://www.bentley.com/> Picture (Device Independent Bitmap)

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