[Equest-users] Team eQUEST: Lowdown Showdown Report

[Aaron Powers]

Patrick,

We did run these directly in the DOE2 engine without the eQuest interface.
There are several good existing tools for running many simulations
including the parametric runs feature in eQuest, but we went a different
route with a custom developed tool so that we could run our algorithms and
not eat up hard drive space.  Each simulation, including writing the inp
and reading the results, was running in about 3 seconds.  We could get up
to 4 DOE2 simulations to run in parallel simultaneously, so each process
could produce 15000 simulations in about 12.5 hours.  This gave us 4x15000
= 60000 simulations overnight.

Aaron


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Lapierre, Patrick" <plapierre at bpa.ca>
To: Nicholas Caton <ncaton at catonenergy.com>, "
equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org" <equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org>
Cc: "Sloat, Cara" <Cara.Sloat at wspgroup.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 13:35:03 +0000
Subject: Re: [Equest-users] Team eQUEST: Lowdown Showdown Report

Congratulations on the award and a very impressive work!



I’m amazed by the results of your mutli-variable optimization algorithms. I
wouldn’t have thought that doing so would improve the optimization effort
by 20%, in comparison to a standard optimization process. I’m also
intrigued in how you could achieve 60 000 runs overnight on a single PC.
Did you use parametric runs in eQUEST or you worked directly via DOE-2? I’m
not quite familiar with programing parametric runs or the like directly in
DOE-2 so I’m not sure how you di dit but would sure like to know how.


Thanks for sharing the results of your experience, it sure looked like one
amazing project.


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) 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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