CashFlow chapter in OpenStudio Report doesn't appear

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This is not a straight answer to your question. I simply ran a similar exercise on a variant of the US DOE Prototype Warehouse. Below are a few pointers and suggestions - SDK developers and/or more savy users may correct me …

Only purchased electricity and natural gas rates here, e.g. no district heating/cooling or water rates:

Output meters

You’ll likely need to add meters (as per your run/eplusout.err warnings). I added 2 meters for the Warehouse:

OS:Output:Meter,  
  {71658cd4-932a-4cd7-80bf-03ecded2de39}, !- Handle  
  ElectricityPurchased:Facility,          !- Name
  hourly;                                 !- Reporting Frequency

OS:Output:Meter,  
  {e5f67f71-9e14-4c0d-96ee-a3d162e7d919}, !- Handle
  NaturalGas:Facility,                    !- Name
  hourly;                                 !- Reporting Frequency

Meter names are important (see run/eplusout.mdd file). In the OpenStudio-generated run/in.idf, I get:

Output:Meter:MeterFileOnly,
  ElectricityPurchased:Facility,          !- Key Name
  hourly;                                 !- Reporting Frequency

Output:Meter:MeterFileOnly,
  NaturalGas:Facility,                    !- Key Name
  hourly;                                 !- Reporting Frequency

EnergyPlus Tariff Measure

Based on the EnergyPlus measure “Tariff Selection-Block” settings, I get 2x UtilityCost:Tariff objects in the generated run/in.idf:

UtilityCost:Tariff,
  Electricity Tariff,                     !- Name
  ElectricityPurchased:Facility,          !- Output Meter Name
  kWh,                                    !- Conversion Factor Choice
  …

UtilityCost:Tariff,
  Gas Tariff,                             !- Name
  NaturalGas:Facility,                    !- Output Meter Name
  Therm,                                  !- Conversion Factor Choice
  …

Note the exact match between the auto-generated UtilityCost:Tariff output meter names and the aforementioned user-added output meters (e.g. “ElectricityPurchased:Facility”, not “Electricity:Facility”). One can freely change the output meters in OpenStudio, but one can’t overwrite the outputs of an EnergyPlus measure while staying in the OpenStudio sandbox. Of course, this is not an issue if one is willing to edit the EnergyPlus Tariff measure itself (or rewrite one from scratch).

LCC

OpenStudio SDK (and consequently App) users have limited control over LCC settings:

OpenStudio users can customize default discount and inflation rates, but not tweak price escalation objects - see discussion here. An excerpt of what is generated in the run/in.idf:

LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation,
  U.S. Avg  Commercial-Electricity,       !- Name
  Electricity,                            !- Resource
  2011,                                   !- Escalation Start Year
  January,                                !- Escalation Start Month
  0.9838,                                 !- Year Escalation 1
  0.9730,                                 !- Year Escalation 2
  ...

Without changes, this will generate warnings in the run/eplusout.err file, such as:

* Warning * The resource referenced by LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation= "U.S. AVG COMMERCIAL-ELECTRICITY" has no energy cost. * ~~~ * ... It is likely that the wrong resource is used. The resource should match the meter used in Utility:Tariff.

One can fix the in.idf directly with a text editor, by changing the “Resource” IDF entry: replace “Electricity” with “ElectricityPurchased” - see here. This harmonizes:

• user-added output meters
• EnergyPlus measure output meter names
• OpenStudio LCC energy resources

This, and a few other edits (like deleting monthly output tables), eliminated all run/eplusout.err warnings related to:

• utility/tariff objects
• LCC objects
• missing output meters etc.

Cash Flow tables in the run/eplustbl.htm file seem fine. But as I’ve broken out of the OpenStudio sandbox, I can no longer rely on the OpenStudio Results Measure to show Cash Flow tables. If one insists on exposing Cash Flow tables using the OpenStudio Results Measure with the OpenStudio Application ... (more)