Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
Get started with the Help page
Ask Your Question
7

Is it practical to use open studio to model basic house upgrades?

asked 2014-10-28 17:08:37 -0600

EnerTek Global's avatar

updated 2014-10-28 19:13:01 -0600

I am working on a project with 85 basic family homes. Is open studio a practical tool to model building upgrades? The homes have the following caricaturists at present: 1. 4 bedrooms, 1 living room 136m^2 2. Using extreme amounts of electricity for heating (10kW average) 3. Located in a very cold climate is south america 4. I want to swap out electric heating with solar thermal (can I model this?) 5. Is there a house template available for "building type"

edit retag flag offensive close merge delete

1 Answer

Sort by ยป oldest newest most voted
5

answered 2014-10-28 17:24:41 -0600

updated 2014-11-11 11:43:23 -0600

Are you planning to run one representative model or 85 separate models? OpenStudio doesn't have a residential building type template...yet.

If you haven't already you may want to take a look at BEopt which also runs EnergyPlus and offers a quick and easy way to generate an IDF as well as easy to use parametric and optimization options for residential buildings.

Currently OpenStudio does not model solar thermal although there is a measure for solar electric. BEopt can model both solar thermal and PV. In either case you should be able to alter the resulting IDF for your purposes.

edit flag offensive delete link more

Comments

Matt, Thank you very much for your response. I am planning to experiment with upgrades in one representative model. All homes are almost the same. I am carrying out a co-heating experiment in one house to collect actual data, I want to tune my model to act like the actual house, and then apply various changes such as insulation upgrades, new windows etc. My goal is to demonstrate the value of various upgrades to my client.

I am going to check out the BEopt link.

EnerTek Global's avatar EnerTek Global  ( 2014-10-28 21:47:02 -0600 )edit

Note that BEopt (using EnergyPlus) can model Solar Water Heating, but not Solar Thermal for space heating.

Eric Wilson's avatar Eric Wilson  ( 2014-11-11 10:01:42 -0600 )edit

Thanks for catching my oversight @Eric Wilson, I've updated my answer.

MatthewSteen's avatar MatthewSteen  ( 2014-11-11 11:44:43 -0600 )edit
1

There is a fairly large collection of residential measures in our measure development repository. These will make their way to the BCL when we've had more time to test them. In the interim, you can drop a note at the openstudio email address requesting access to the repo if you want to play with them.

ljbrackney's avatar ljbrackney  ( 2014-11-11 16:06:53 -0600 )edit

Your Answer

Please start posting anonymously - your entry will be published after you log in or create a new account.

Add Answer

Training Workshops

Careers

Question Tools

2 followers

Stats

Asked: 2014-10-28 17:08:37 -0600

Seen: 1,045 times

Last updated: Nov 11 '14