EnergyPlus, a new-generation energy simulation program
- and others
Many of the popular building energy simulation programs around the world are reaching maturity--some use simulation methods (and even code) that originated in the 1960s. For more than two decades, the US government supported development of two hourly building energy simulation programs, BLAST and DOE-2. Designed in the days of mainframe computers, expanding their capabilities further has become difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. At the same time, the 30 years have seen significant advances in analysis and computational methods and power--providing an opportunity for significant improvement in these tools. In early 1996, a federal agency began developing a new building energy simulation tool, EnergyPlus, building on development experience with two existing programs: DOE-2 and BLAST. EnergyPlus includes a number of innovative simulation features--such as variable time steps, built-in template and external modular systems that are integrated with a heat balance-based zone simulation--and input and output data structures tailored to facilitate third party module and interface development. Other planned simulation capabilities include multizone airflow, and electric power and solar thermal and photovoltaic simulation. Beta testing of EnergyPlus begins in early 1999.
- Research Organization:
- Dept. of Energy, Washington, DC (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 20026739
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Renewable and advanced energy systems for the 21st Century, Maui, HI (US), 04/11/1999--04/15/1999; Other Information: 1 CD-ROM. Operating system required: Windows i386(tm), i486(tm), Pentium (R) or Pentium Pro, MS Windows 3.1, 95, or NT 3.51, 8 MB RAM; MacIntosh and Power MacIntosh with a 68020 or greater processor, System software version 7.1, 3.5 MB RAM (5 MB for PowerMac) 6 MB available hard-disk space; UNIX; PBD: 1999; Related Information: In: Renewable and advanced energy systems for the 21st century, RAES'99 proceedings, by Hogan, R.; Kim, Y.; Kleis, S.; O'Neal, D.; Tanaka, T. [eds.], [1125] pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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