Hi everyone. This is a Harshul Singhal, again. For today's class we will talk about OpenStudio measures. Again, This class is very important. Feel free to comment your questions under this video. You can always send us email and we'll try to reach back to you as soon as possible. As I mentioned on day one, OpenStudio measures, they're like small scripts. They are written either on Ruby language or they are written on C++ language. They basically do something to your energy model. And, it does something for you easily and quickly. For example, if you want to provide a window wall ratio of, let's say, 60% to each and every wall, you can do it within 10 seconds. If you remember, on SketchUp we actually ran those scripts. Like, multiple scripts. Something like, window wall ratio, providing some shading devices, or providing some thermal zones. If you remember, we just did some clicks, and things happen for us. Within like milliseconds. I won't say milliseconds, but yeah, within like, 10 seconds or something.
Even those scripts in SketchUp's, they were OpenStudio measures. They're incredible force multiplier, all right. In this class, first of all, we'll talk about different kinds of measures. There are 3 kinds of measures here in OpenStudio. First one are OpenStudio measures, they basically use Ruby language. You can actually run them directly on your model from this, components and measures library, here. Apply measure now. Then second kind of measures are EnergyPlus measures. I don't know if I told you this ever, but, there are a lot of components from EnergyPlus. They still don't live in OpenStudio interface. If I'm not wrong, almost 95% of EnergyPlus functions are in OpenStudio. But, some of the functions, right now I can't remember on top of my head, but there are some of the functions which you can't do in OpenStudio. But, for those functions, you can actually run a particular, special kind of measure, which we call them as EnergyPlus measures. You can run those EnergyPlus measures here in this tab here, in this measures tab. And, the third tab, third kind of measures are reporting measures. You can create different kinds of reports using those measures. And, don't worry, we'll run all these three measures today. Like, if you are confused right now, just don't know about it, okay.
Again, like, I totally forgot one more thing. Like, when you run EnergyPlus measures, they do some changes on your IDF file. If you remember, I showed you the lab, the directory where you save your file. This is where I save different versions of my OSM model, the energy model. And then, if you remember, I also mentioned that it creates an associated directory for your model. For example, if I want to see the associated directory for this OSM file, which has saved on June 13th, that's the folder that I need to look for. Click on it. And, you can see that there are 3 different folders, again. Go to files. This is empty, right now. I think we didn't, did not run this simulation, that's why it's empty. Go back, here. And, let's look for this one, let's say, for the model which you saved on June 27th. Look for this folder, here. And, you can see, there are 4 folders, now. Go to files, and this is the EPW file, which is your weather file. Then measures, that's where all your measures live. If you remember, we actually provided one measure for output table. I will show you later in the OpenStudio interface, as well.
In this folder all your measures live, what you apply in, on your energy model, okay. Then reports, that's where all your reports are, as per the measures that you provided earlier. And, the last one is run, that's where all the magic happens. When you run this simulation on OpenStudio it creates multiple files for you. Like, a lot of files are exactly similar to the files when you run an EnergyPlus simulation. What happens when you run simulation, here. It automatically exports out an EnergyPlus file for you, which is the IDF file. And then, it runs the simulation on top of that IDF file. And then, brings the vessel back to your OpenStudio model, okay. There is a process. If you remember, if you remember, I mentioned that EnergyPlus measures make some changes on the IDF file. For example, if you run some EnergyPlus measures, it will make changes on the IDF file, not on the OSM file. It will first export your IDF file, and then, we'll make some changes based on the measure that you have provided earlier. The EnergyPlus measure, all right. Very important.
I already mentioned to you this ERR file, this is the error file. You just need to right click on it, open it in NotePad++, and they're different kind of files. Which will see like, what, else do we have here, okay. We'll check it later at the end, okay. Go back here, I think, that's it for now. We can move to the next thing, which is how to bring those measures into your model. Well, if you remember, I explained to you earlier that, you need to bring your measures from BCL library. Building component library of NREL. If you just look, goggle for NREL BCL, that's the website that we are looking for. BCL.NREL.gov, okay. If you go to browse measures, that's where all your measures live. People, electric, lighting. For example, let's say, what do, do we have for lighting equipment, click on this. And, you can see it has some measures like, set lighting loads by lighting power density, deduce lighting load by percentage, set EnergyPlus light objects, and so on, okay.
If you go back, there are a lot of measures for HVAC. Let's see what we have in HVAC. If you go to some subcategory, something like, heating. Then you can see you have some measures like, set burner efficiency, side boiler thermal efficiency, side furnace efficiency. How can you bring those measures in your computer? Well, first of all you need to login. I have my login ID, I'm just going to click on it. And, you can see, I just need to copy this key. And, if you're a first-time user, if you click on components and measures. Click on this, find measures. And, it will ask you for a BCL key, which I already have mentioned in my first video. Paste that BCL key, and then you will have access to this new window, okay. And, I also asked you in my first class that, hey, please take some time to download all the measures. You just click on this, check all, and then download. Then go to next one. Then check all and download. It's a very good practice to download all these measures on your computer.
When you do this download thing, it just needs to be done only once, okay. You need not to download all these measures again and again for your energy models. For example a lot of times people ask me this question. Hey Harshul, if we are working on 4 different OpenStudio models, do we need to download all these measures 4 times? No. You just do it once. You just download them once on your computer. And, next time when you work on a new energy model on OpenStudio, you will see those measures in your library. When I say library, just go to components and measures, and click on this, apply measure now, all right. Very important thing. And, also, if you get familiar with OpenStudio measures, you can create your own measures. You just need to understand how Ruby works. For example, if you go to Google Chrome and search for something like, OpenStudio measure writing guide. The first link, this one, it gives you a brief demo on how these measures work, okay.
I mean, we don't cover this measure I think in this class but it's very easy you just need to get familiar with Ruby. And, you can go through this documentation, it's a great documentation. And, by some practice you can get familiar with how to write these measures. And, to be honest, like, I have an architecture background and I wasn’t into coding and all. But, I learnt this measure writing thing within like 7day. Feel free to go through this link and practice something, okay. I can also show you where can you save your, where you save your, these OpenStudio measures. On my computer, if I go on C directory, and if I go to users. And then, my name, there's a directory, BCL, okay. You can see those like, different, crazy numbers, that's where all my download measures live. And then, when I created my own measures, I renamed them properly. I have like, hundreds of my own measures. You can see they’re named properly. Something like, let's say, let me just check it for you.
Change building location. chill beams, cold climate heat pumps. I've created my own measures, here. You can also do it by yourself, it's very easy. In case you want to buy our measures, our OpenStudio measures, you can always write us down on our email ID. You have our email ID. It's, info@simulate.energy. And, we can just talk, like, you know, what kind of measures you need. We can always help you out on that, all right. If I go back to my OpenStudio interface, I can go to, apply measures, now. It takes some time to like, reboot itself. Let's see, okay. It's still working on, on something, okay. You can see like, I have at least 400 measures. On at least, not 400, then, like, 350 or something. I have, I have created my own measures, as I mentioned earlier. Like, you know, your counting will be different than mine. For example, if I want to make some changes directly on my OpenStudio model, like, permanent changes. I just need to look for this option, apply measure, now. I just apply measure, here. Click on this, apply measure tab, here. And, the changes will be done permanently, okay.
There's another way to apply measures, we call them sidecar measures. Basically, those measures, when you apply here, in measures section, that third tab from bottom, here on the left hand side. If you make some changes, here, or actually apply the measure, here. It won't make the permanent changes. When you run this simulation next time, it will make changes only during the simulation. But, you will still have your exist, like, your existing file, okay. There are like different advantages, or disadvantages of doing that. You will understand it later. Just want you to know, let you know that there are different ways to provide these measures on your OpenStudio model, okay. They, as I mentioned, the first one is providing some changes in your SketchUp model, on your SketchUp interface. Then second one is, apply these permanent changes through this apply measure tab. And, the third one is, using this sidecar measure method, okay. And, the fourth one is, using the parametric analysis tool. We call it pad. We will learn about pad in the last class, okay.
You can also make some cumulative or interactive changes on your model, through these OpenStudio measures, okay. All right, let's just do some exercise, here. I'm using my last file that I saved on June 27th. I don't, I don't know what the time, isn’t correct, but somewhere around, I don’t know, 10 or 11 a.m. I'm going to save a new copy of it. Save as, let's say, July 11. And, let's say, 8:00 a.m., okay. 8:00 a.m., and then version 13 underscore measure, okay. Save it. Now I'm going to make some permanent changes on my model. I'm going to use this method, which is, apply measure now, okay. Click on this, apply measure now. It will take some time, maybe like five or ten seconds. Again, if you click on this, apply measure now thing, you can't apply any EnergyPlus or reporting measures. Very important. You can only apply OpenStudio measures from here. In case you want to apply some EnergyPlus or reporting measures, you need to go to this tab, which we will do later, okay.
You can see there are different categories, here. First one is for envelope and electric lighting equipment. I don't have any measures for people. HVAC, refrigeration, no measure for refrigeration because I don't do lot of energy modeling for refrigeration. Then service, water heating. Then, there is only one measure for me on-site power generation, then whole building economics, and reporting. Well, I'm sorry, like, you can also apply reporting measures. But, there are only certain kind of reporting measures that you can apply here, okay. And, we will talk about reporting measures later, more in this tab, measure tab, okay. Let's just apply some measures in the envelope section. If you remember, we have used an office building based on ASHRAE 90.1 2010 for climate zone 3A. Let's just assume that the R-value for walls is somewhere around R-12. I don't remember exactly what is the R value for 3A. I think it's R-0.084 or something, all right. Let's just make some changes for the installation of the wall.
If I click on opaque. And, again, my list is quite long of the measure list, yours must be shorter. Look for something like, increase R-value of installation for exterior wall, okay. This is the one. All right, so, I'm sorry. Guys, like, looks like my model crashed on me. I'm just going to open my model, again. And, that's where you're like, frequent saving of a file is handy. You definitely want to save a model after every, let's say, 15 to 20 minutes, so that you don't lose any of your work, okay. This is my file. I don't know why it crashed on me, but, let’s just open it, again. And, go to components and measures, again. Apply measure, again, it will take some time. Okay. And, we go to envelope. Let's see what else stays in this form. There are a lot of kind of, a lot of different kinds of measures, here. I mean, I can't apply all of them for you in this class, but like, you know, at least, I just want to go through the list.
You can change the location of a building, here. You can bar aspect, change the bar aspect ratio, if you just want to create the shoebox model. And, a lot of different things. Rotate the building, surface matching, very important. You can do surface matching in OpenStudio interface, as well. The way we did in SketchUp. I want to do some changes for OpenStudio wall, that, my models walls. Let's click on this, increase R-value of installation for exterior wall. You can see there is a description given, and there's some like, default values provided, here. You can always change them. Let's say I want to change it to R-30. I want to allow both increase in degrees. Maybe, I'm not sure, what is my existing R-value for my wall. I just want to check this option, too. And, in case you want to do some kind of life cycle cost analysis, you can provide some values for installation cost, retrofit cost, and year to incur one-time retrofit.
Let’s just like provide some value, here. Let's say $1 per square feet, and 0.5 for retrofit, and like, here to incur, incur one-time retrofit cost, let's say, 5 years. And apply measure, okay. Now, what is happening here, it is actually executing the measure for you. It's basically like doing some script execution in the background, making some changes for you. And, after that, it will show you the measure output, which is the initial condition of your model, and the final condition, okay. If you remember, we actually did some exercise where we updated the south wall to R-28, okay. And then, for the rest of the building, we have R-7.3, okay. And, the final condition, it says, the existing insulation for exterior walls was set to R-30. This was accomplished for an initial cost, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, okay. It has all this information provided. Now, what you can do, either you can go back if you are not happy with this. Let's say, go back. Let's make it to, let's say, R-30, and then apply measure. Again, you can always go back, it didn't make the permanent changes, it did the execution for you. And, before making the permanent changes, it asks you whether you want to accept the changes, okay. It's totally on you if you want to accept the changes or not, all right.
Again, you can see that change has been done, it's R-33. And, I'm going to accept the changes. It will take some time. Let's say, okay, it's already done. Now my, my walls, they are, they are like, highly insulated, now. Compared to what it was earlier. If I want to confirm it, I can either run this simulation and look at the final report, or I can go to constructions, here, and confirm it, here as well, okay. If I confirm, I can see in constructions. There should be a new wall somewhere. Okay, can you see, this is the new insulation, here. Like, it has like, re-named it, like, differently. It has like better insulation, I know it's like, a bit difficult to understand, here. But like, definitely it has made changes for you. In materials, there should be a new material for insulation. You can see, here. You can see the mass insulation is R-33. It had made a proper change for you, okay. Now I can run this simulation. I will see different results then what I had last week, okay. You can save the file. Either, you can run simulation now, or you can provide more changes, here. Let's say, you want to apply some more measures now. Okay. Again, it will take some time.
Now, I want to make some changes in my lighting. I want, I can either provide some daylighting sensors, I can totally do that, okay. I can make some changes in lighting power density. For example, I want to reduce my lighting power density to, let's say, 33%. I can use this measure, which says, reduce lighting loads per percentage. You can read the description. And then, in input, here. It asks you first thing, hey, do you want to make changes in entire building, or some particular space types, okay. Let's say, I want to do it only for open offices. I want to reduce the lighting by 25%. Increase in material, and all, you can provide this value. In case you don't want to do any life cycle cost analysis, you can just keep them blank, okay. I'm just going to keep them blank for now. And, apply measure, okay. Again, it's executing the measure for you. Something is happening for you, so yeah. And now, you can see it has reduced the wattage for us. I think it says the lighting power was, this is this, and the models final lighting was 17,639.
You can see, it made some changes for that particular space type, okay. Open office, that's why the change is very small, okay. I am going to accept the changes, and then go to some other measures. What happens, a lot of times people use this OpenStudio measure technique to just show some energy efficiency measures. Either like, incremental changes or cumulative savings. Because of the like, the efficiency measures they want to bring on their project. A lot of times, what we do, we run ASHRAE baseline model. Then, the second run is, something like, bringing a high performance design envelope. Then we change the insulation properties, we change the window insulation. A lot of things. And, the next run is, something like, for lighting power densities. The next one is for, let's say, natural ventilation, or an efficient plant, efficient boiler, or something like that, okay.
There are different ways to use these measures. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to run one more measure here for you. It asked me to save the file, let's save it. Okay, again, it takes some time, we need to be patient with this. Like, it's doing some like, you know, scripting for you, so, script execution for you. It can take some time, all right. They're measures for equipment, there are like, a whole bunch of measures for each, which is very important. A lot of times, you need to create everything from scratch. Like, zone equipment, or, let's say, HVAC systems, plant loops, a lot of creating everything from scratch. You can just run these measures, and you can create everything, like, within 10 seconds. For example, in my list here, you can see, I have some options like, add system one PTAC residential based in ASHRAE 90.1, appendix G. Then system 5.
What else do I have. Create, let me see, something very, which is very interesting. Something like, ground source heat pump with DOAS dedicated outdoor system. Like, if you want to create this kind of system from scratch, it can take forever. But, if I run this simulation, I can do it within 10 seconds. I'm going to run these HVAC measures in my next class. I'm not going to run them right now. But yeah, you can totally use them to make some changes. Even for HVAC systems. Very important, all right. Let's run one more simulation. Let's say, something is interesting in space types. Hey, do I want to, let’s see, do I want to, I don't think I want to run something from here. Let's go back to something like, energy recovery. Why not, let's bring some energy recovery ventilators. Well, we don't have any system, so it won’t work. For example, if I apply a measure now, it will either show me some error, or it will give me a proper warning. Let's say, let's say, let's see what it does for us.
You can see, it says, not applicable, this building has no air loops to which ERV's can be added. Makes sense, right. Like, you know, if we don't have any like, particular component in our project, the associated measure won't work. And, these measures are very smart to let you know about this thing, okay. Let's go back to something like, in, let's say, in envelope, again. And, make some changes for fenestration. I want to make some changes for my window construction. I want to change my windows. For example, I want to change just for north. And, I want to bring a particular construction that I want to change. Let's say, I want to change the double pane windows construction I created, and apply measure. Well, let me just read it for you, again. Like, you know, I think I misread it. It says, pick a window construction from the model to replace existing window construction, all right. Let's just assume, for North windows we had, something like, interior windows. And, we want to change it to double pane windows. For this particular measure you need to have that construction already in your model, all right. And, let's say you have 100 windows for north, north orientation. You don't want to go to each and every wall, each and every space, to change, make the changes. You can just do it, here.
For example, for north windows, I want to change it to double panel. And, hit apply now, hit apply measure. It will make all those changes within 10 seconds for you. It's like doing some simulation, doing some script execution for you. And now ,you can see, it gives you the initial condition, as well as the final condition. It says that, hey, 728 square feet of existing building has been changed to this particular window construction, and a lot of other things, okay. Accept changes. And, it will do the permanent changes on your model, okay. And, once you're happy with all those measures, you can run this simulation, okay. I'm going to run the simulation, here. And, in my next class, I will cover those sidecar measures. Thank you.