[Bldg-sim] 90.1 baseline in EnergyPro v5

[Dakota Kelley]

Hwakong,

 

My experience with EnergyPro v5 is that the baseline building is not
correctly modeled.  The envelope criteria are often applied correctly,
but HVAC-related metrics such as fan power are incorrectly calculated.
Compounding the problem are report-population errors; it is sometimes
impossible to tell if the simulation is correct but the auto-filled
report is wrong, or if the simulation and report are both wrong.  I know
for certain that fan power is incorrect because it can be cross-checked
with the standard DOE2 SV-A reports in addition to the auto-filled LEED
EAc1 report.  However, other baseline metrics such as those described in
90.1-2007 G3.1.3.4 (hot water reset schedule) and G3.1.3.8 (chilled
water design temperatures) are much more difficult to verify.  I agree
with your assessment that there is virtually no control over the
baseline and would add that there is insufficient control over the
proposed model, too.  To summarize my major complaints:

 

*         Appendix G is incorrectly applied/report mistakes are normal
and there is no way to fix them

*         There is very little customization available; it is nowhere
near the caliber of eQUEST, EnergyPlus, etc.

*         There are no substantial self-training resources (text- or
video-based)

*         The user group is focused almost exclusively on issues
pertaining to T24 compliance and T24 report errors

*         EnergySoft's support, while responsive, lacks customer service
skills and seems to operate under the assumption that all issues lie
with the user.  I also suspect Support has misinformed me about
EnergyPro's capabilities - I was told it can accurately model a DOAS
with heat recovery, but how can this be if it is built on the DOE2.1e
engine?  There's no way to verify accuracy if I cannot parse hourly
reports. 

 

In short, the only value I see in purchasing EnergyPro (outside of T24
compliance) is the incorporation of VRV products.  Once VRV is
incorporated into other software, my firm plans to discontinue using
EnergyPro for the reasons above.   

 

Regards,

 

Dakota Kelley

Telios MEP Engineers

 

 

Message: 3

Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:47:38 -0700

From: Hwakong Cheng <hwakong at hotmail.com>

To: <bldg-sim at lists.onebuilding.org>,

      <bldg-rate at lists.onebuilding.org>

Subject: [Bldg-sim] 90.1 baseline in EnergyPro v5

Message-ID: <COL112-W57053ED36F1629FE11295DBC1E0 at phx.gbl>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"

 

 

About a year ago, there was a posting asking about user experiences with
the new EnergyPro version 5, which is capable of automatically
generating a 90.1 baseline model, but there were no responses at the
time. 

 

http://www.energysoft.com/main/page_energypro_nonresidenital_modules.htm
l

 

 

 

Has anyone used it yet and have feedback to share on the quality of its
interpretation of Appendix G? I've used older versions of EnergyPro
before, but I'm specifically looking for feedback on the 90.1 compliance
functionality. 

 

 

 

My experience with EnergyPro for Title 24 compliance is that, beyond
specifying the details of your proposed building, there is very limited
control over how that is transformed in the baseline model and how the
T-24 ACM is interpreted (probably a good thing). It is what it is and
there is no way to explicitly edit the baseline model. eQUEST, on the
other hand, typically crashes during Title 24 compliance runs, but once
it runs, there is always the possibility of taking the auto-generated
proposed and standard model input files and "fixing them." 

 

 

 

Without the possibility of applying a human touch to the interpretation
of the nitty gritty in Appendix G and all of the particulars of new
building designs out there, I imagine it would be very difficult to
create a robust compliance engine that would work for every situation.
On the other hand, it might be nice not to *be able* to look at and,
therefore, not *have to* look at the details of the baseline building...
but I haven't used it yet.

 

 

 

Thanks for any feedback.

 

 

 

Hwakong

 

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