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

[Dan.Monaghan at bentley.com]

Bill 

 

I agree with your comments about operational issues contributing to lack
of "performance" in high-performance buildings. 

 

However, on the design side,  many energy analysis/simulation programs
don't allow for the modeling of sophisticated 'green' heating and
cooling strategies, i.e. mix mode, their plant/system definitions are
limited, and they can't simulate the buildings operation, i.e.
night-time cooling. 

 

The only program EnergyPlus program we've found that overcomes many of
these limitations is Hevacomp out of the UK.  For retocommissioning
work, it seems to offer the right set of ease-of-use and capabilities.

 

 

 

Dan Monaghan | Global Marketing Manager
Building Performance Group

Bentley Systems, Incorporated

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

 

  <http://www.bentley.com/> 

 

 

 

 

 

From: Bill [mailto:bkoran at qwest.net] 
Sent: Sunday, April 12, 2009 11:00 PM
To: Dan Monaghan; equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: RE: [Equest-users] EnergyPlus--Quest Competitor or Natural
Evolution

 

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: www.quest-world.com <http://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, www.bentley.com/eps <http://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: dan.monaghan at bentley.com <mailto:christine.byrne at bentley.com>  |
URL: www.bentley.com <http://www.bentley.com> 
Address: Bentley | 40 Dunvegan Rd. | Baltimore| MD | 21228 | USA 

 

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