[Equest-users] Team eQUEST: Lowdown Showdown Report
Joe Huang
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
Wed Nov 11 20:38:57 PST 2015
My experiences with doing large numbers of DOE-2 parametrics are
similar. As an old geezer, I have always (and continue to) run DOE-2
using batch scripts. When I got a quad-core desktop computer 5 years
ago, I would simply open up 4 command prompt windows and then dump a
batch of DOE-2 runs in each. For the simple residential model I was
using, a single DOE-2 run, including postprocessing using awk scripts,
would take less than a second, so I could get 5-6 runs done every
second. That allowed me to build a data base of 400,000 runs for window
films, that being the project goal, in a little over 24 hours.
Joe
Joe Huang
White Box Technologies, Inc.
346 Rheem Blvd., Suite 205A
Moraga CA 94556
yjhuang at whiteboxtechnologies.com
http://weather.whiteboxtechnologies.com for simulation-ready weather data
http://www.whiteboxtechnologies.com
(o) (925)388-0265
(c) (510)928-2683
"building energy simulations at your fingertips"
On 11/11/2015 4:01 PM, Aaron Powers wrote:
> 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 <mailto:plapierre at bpa.ca>>
> To: Nicholas Caton <ncaton at catonenergy.com
> <mailto:ncaton at catonenergy.com>>, "equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org
> <mailto:equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org>"
> <equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org
> <mailto:equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org>>
> Cc: "Sloat, Cara" <Cara.Sloat at wspgroup.com
> <mailto: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 <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 <tel:785.410.3317>
>
> www.catonenergy.com <http://www.catonenergy.com>
>
>
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