December 21, 2011
Report

Extend EnergyPlus to Support Evaluation, Design, and Operation of Low Energy Buildings

Abstract

During FY10-11, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in collaboration with the EnergyPlus development team implemented the following high priority enhancements to support the simulation of high performance buildings: • Improve Autosizing of Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Components • Life-Cycle Costing to Evaluate Energy Efficiency Upgrades • Develop New Model to Capture Transformer Losses • Enhance the Model for Electric Battery Storage • Develop New Model for Chiller-Tower Optimization. This report summarizes the technical background, new feature development and implementation details, and testing and validation process for these enhancements. The autosizing, life-cycle costing and transformer model enhancements/developments were included in EnergyPlus release Version 6.0, and the electric battery model development will be included in Version 7.0. The model development of chiller-tower optimization will be included in a later version (after Version 7.0).

Revised: January 17, 2012 | Published: December 21, 2011

Citation

Cho H., W. Wang, A. Makhmalbaf, K. Yun, J. Glazer, L. Scheier, and V. Srivastava, et al. 2011. Extend EnergyPlus to Support Evaluation, Design, and Operation of Low Energy Buildings Richland, WA: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.