[Equest-users] Team eQUEST: Lowdown Showdown Report

[Drake A. Wahlers]

Well done , Nick, as well as the rest of the team.

I just attended the Chicago ASHRAE meeting in which the IES modeling team presented their results. It was very interesting in how they came up with a similar building and system design in a very different modeling environment.

I’m curious as to how you automated the multivariable simulation process.

Thanks,

Drake Wahlers, P.E., CEM
Energy and Development Engineer

Leopardo Energy, Inc. ▫ 333 W Wacker Dr, Suite 250 ▫ Chicago, Illinois 60606
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From: Equest-users [mailto:equest-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Nicholas Caton
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 9:53 PM
To: equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org
Cc: Sloat, Cara
Subject: [Equest-users] Team eQUEST: Lowdown Showdown Report

This year at the 2015 ASHRAE Energy Modeling Conference, there was a “Lowdown Showdown” design competition.  Voluntary teams representing most commercial energy simulation software packages & platforms tried to tackle a relatively open design challenge to bring a building (of our own design) down to net-zero energy.  The relatively small team representing eQUEST/DOE-2 won an award by popular vote for the “Most Creative” design solution!

The eQUEST team had 5 members (all CC’ed on this email thread) - you may recognize a few as frequent contributors over these mailing lists:

•       Aaron Powers

•       Cara Sloat

•       Pasha Korber-Gonzales

•       Chris Jones

•       Nick Caton

I served as ‘coach’ for the team, and in that context am very proud to share some new information concerning our collaborative efforts, design process, and the final ‘product’ with the greater eQUEST-users community.  Those who were able to attend the conference experienced a live presentation by representatives for the teams and a panel discussion with all of the coaches to field questions/challenges from the audience, but time was quite constrained.  This this is an opportunity to share with those who could not attend and to convey/discuss things in more detail.

Attached is a ‘poster’ that covers much of the information we presented for the project, and outlines the process we followed over the ~9 weeks we had to collaborate.  We accomplished a great deal in the time we had, in spite of a late start due to some difficulties in assembling the minimum # of members required.  The team met weekly via VOIP calls (Skype/join.me<http://join.me>) to coordinate efforts, present individual findings, and to simply share knowledge and relate/compare experiences.  As a group, each individual identified and contributed challenges/problems/systems of interest early on, and as a group we made it a goal to incorporate those elements into our project along the way.  This ‘spirit’ to tackle new/interesting issues and to avoid “easy/obvious” solutions lead to some interesting design decisions along the way!

I initially thought I would make it a personal goal to ensure the project would be engaging, informative, and rewarding for every participant, but I learned that with the right group that is going to happen anyway!  My only regret is that more of my friends and colleagues in the industry did not get to participate.  I sincerely hope when the next opportunity comes along, more individuals from this community will take the initiative to participate – it was very much worth our time!

If anybody would like to learn more or ask questions, please freely reply to this email thread!

Kind regards,

~Nick

NICK CATON, P.E.
Owner

Caton Energy Consulting
  306 N Ferrel
  Olathe, KS  66061
  office:  785.410.3317
www.catonenergy.com

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