Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Different commercial energy modeling software such as Trane Trace 700 and
e-Quest are designed to assist the energy modeler to perform energy analysis for
the buildings. A large number of building energy modeling and load calculations
software are available in the market, each with its own weaknesses and strengths.
For an extensive list of these software and their specifi cations refer to the depart-
ment of energy web site.
http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/tools_directory/
Let's continue with a brief discussion on how software such as Trane Trace 700
or e-Quest works. Trane Trace 700 is a load calculation and energy modeling soft-
ware that is very popular among the HVAC professional community not only due to
its ease of use and available comprehensive help documents, but also because Trane
is one of the main equipment and controls manufacturers in the world as well. Trane
Trace 700 help document not only assists the users to perform the desired building
load calculations and energy modeling, but also provides a very thorough and infor-
mative guidance for describing the systems and advance controls. It also has the
capability of customizing libraries and templates for different scheduling models.
Subsequently e-Quest is an energy modeling specifi c software with visual pre-
sentation capability of the modeled buildings. When a modeler uses e-Quest for
modeling a multistory building, the software provides the capability to divide the
whole building into only three sections. With e-Quest the modeler can model the
lowest level and top level of the building separately and model the rest of the middle
fl oors as one section. This approach is proven to be a very good estimate of how a
multistory building consumes energy. Software is free and available for down load
from the internet.
The main target of any energy modeling software is to provide predictions of the
yearly energy consumption (cost) of the buildings. These predictions are made
based on the calculated consumed quantity and cost of different utilized energy
resources which are responsible for delivering cooling or heating (or other energy
consumers in the building) to the building throughout the year. This process in
general is similar to process of using load calculation software to select proper
cooling and heating systems based on the calculated required cooling and heating
loads in the building. The difference here is that in load calculation process the
designer's target is solely calculating the building maximum required cooling and
heating when it faces the most extreme conditions. Based on these results the
designer will select the proper equipment sizes (capacity) that would be installed in
the building. Such selection helps the system to be capable to offset the cooling or
heating loads even when the worst conditions both in the outdoor environment and
internal conditions happen simultaneously. On the other hand in energy modeling
process the focus of the designer is not the worst instant condition, but it is the
complete hourly load profi les and therefore the energy consumption (cost) through-
out the whole year.
In order to perform energy analysis, multiple levels of information and data have
to be entered to the software as the simulation inputs.
Even though the confi guration and structure of the input information to these
software may be somehow different from each other, but the underlying idea and
