Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
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My current approach is to use a python script to create a batch file that includes all the simulations, one per line. And to then pass the batch file to the 'parallel' command in linux to run the batch file. I can provide additional information if you think this would be a useful approach for you, but in the meantime here is a basic outline.
'parallel' man page: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E36784_01/html/E36870/parallel-1.html
example usage (to run 6 jobs simultaneously): parallel -j 6 --progress --no-notice < batch.sh
and the batch.sh file would contain something like this: energyplus --weather /path_to_wth_files/AUS_VIC.Melbourne.948680_RMY.epw --output-prefix result --output-suffix C file1.idf energyplus --weather /path_to_wth_files/AUS_VIC.Melbourne.948680_RMY.epw --output-prefix result --output-suffix C file2.idf energyplus --weather /path_to_wth_files/AUS_VIC.Melbourne.948680_RMY.epw --output-prefix result --output-suffix C file3.idf
You might need to play around with this idea a little bit because my batch file doesn't look quite like that. Each line of my batch file is a call to another python script that creates a temporary directory and runs energyplus in that directory. If you go down this route (i.e. with temp directories) then you will likely hit some of the same issues I did (such as needing an Energy+.ini file in the temp directory).
Sorry that this is only a partial answer but hopefully of some use.
And lastly, I'm running on a fairly old 8-core intel machine and for my system there isn't much benefit in running more than 5-way parallel.
