EnergyPlus: Energy simulation program 论文

摘要

Various building energy simulation programs developed around the world are reaching maturity. Many use simulation methods (and even code) that originated in the 1960s. Without substantial redesign and restructuring of the programs, continuing to expand their capabilities has become difficult, time-consuming, and prohibitively expensive. However, phenomenal advances in analysis methods and computational power have increased the opportunity for significant improvements in the flexibility and comprehensiveness of these tools. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) began planning for a new generation of simulation tools in 1995 using a three-step process: � Create an inventory of existing DOE-sponsored tools � Sponsor workshops to get recommendations from users and developers about needs in energy simulation, and � Define new generation tools based on the recommendations from the workshops and experience in developing BLAST [BLA] and DOE-2 [WIN]. Three organizations formed the initial development team: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) — developers of DOE's DOE-2 program (Winkelmann et al. 1993) — and U.S. Army Construction Engineering Laboratory (CERL) and the University of Illinois (UI) — developers of DOD's BLAST program [BLA]. This article focuses on the structure, features, and capabilities of EnergyPlus. What is EnergyPlus? EnergyPlus is a new building performance simulation program that combines the best capabilities and features from BLAST and DOE-2 along with new capabilities. EnergyPlus comprises completely new code written in Fortran 90. It is primarily a simulation engine — there is no formal user interface. Both BLAST and DOE-2 have many user interfaces developed by independent third-party developers. We have invited these same developers to work on graphical user interfaces for EnergyPlus. Modular Code One of the main goals for EnergyPlus is to create a well-organized, modular structure that facilitates