8 - Life Cycle Cost analysis & Utility bills for Calibration in OpenStudio

Learn OpenStudio Now in one of these online courses:

arting immediately!

Script Preview

All right, everyone. Let me just go back to my OpenStudio interface, here. If you're not familiar with EnergyPlus reporting or results summary, let's start from scratch, actually. You can see, it gives you all the information for your weather, like, what, all the weather data, like, for example, this is for San Francisco. Then, it gives you an annual building utility performance summary for site and source energy, the building area, this site to source energy conversion factors, the end use energy consumption, a lot more of the information. Something like, on-site thermal sources. In case you have some information related to renewables, that will also be visible here. You can see, the unoccupied, I'm sorry. The comfort and setpoint not met summary information here, because we have used ideal air load system. That's why the unmet load, unmet hours for heating and cooling is, they are 0 here.

Then, if you look at this table of contents here, all the information related to other components of your energy model. Something like, envelope summary, lighting summary, HVAC sizing summary, outdoor air summary. If you click on, let's say, envelope summary, it has all the information related to your envelope. Again, this information is right now in SI unit. And, we can convert in IP unit if you want. But, we will do it later, all right. We will go through this report again and again. Let's not worry about this for now. Let's move to the next option, which is, go to this tab, the first tab, again. We have finished this weather file sub tab. Let's click on this next tab, which is life cycle cost term. And here, again, like, in case you want to do some kind of life cycle costing or life cycle cost analysis you can actually do it. You can read more on this by clicking on this link, here. Let's click on this. Basically, it does use the manual, the life cycle cost manual, by National Institute of Standards and Technology.

In case you want to read more on this, let's just like, Google something like, life cycle cost analysis. And NIST and click on, let's say, this option, the first one. Or, actually, this one. Building cycle cost program from NIST.gov. Click on this. And then, maybe not, this this is not the one. Let me just like refine my search. Something like, FEMP, which is federal energy management program. Maybe this one. Let's see. Okay, I'm going to download this thing here. And, you can see there's the guide and criteria for this life cycle costing manual here. It is a lot more information. For this class, we don't cover this, life cycle cost analysis. But, in case you want to start, this is the nice guideline here from NIST. Just go through it, you can actually provide a lot more feedback to your model.

For example, like, hey, we, you want to do analysis type as FEMP, yes. Analysis length, 25 years. And then, you can add more information here, all right. For this, please start with the life cycle cost manual by FEMP. Actually, for FEMP by NIST. NIST is, again, is National Institute of Standards and Technology, okay. If you read more on them, you could just click on their Wikipedia page. This is a kind of physical science library in US. They work a lot in different kind of standards and technology, okay. Please go through their manuals, it's very important, as in, if you are in building science analyst, all right.

The next thing that I want to explain here is, the utility bills step, okay. You can see right now this tab is not active. It says, to enable this tab you must go to the overview sub-tab and select a weather file, which I already have done. And, select a calendar year, which makes sense, right. If you want to provide some weather file information, or actually, sorry, utility bill information, you need to provide the year. Like, which year do you want to run for your simulation, okay. I've already provided a weather file, here. Let's click on this, select year by, let's say, utility data for, let's say, for 2017, okay. For my last year, and that's it. We want to turn on day lighting savings time. Yes, you can totally do this, okay. I mean, I'm going to click off for now, because it won't make a huge difference in my model. And, what I can do, I can actually provide some utility data.

Again, why do you want to provide a utility data for your model? Well, this utility bill data won't be valid for your new construction. You need not worry about it. In case you are trying to create an energy model for existing building, you can always calibrate it. For calibration you always need to provide some utility data. If you are an energy model or building science specialist, you definitely know this. What I'm going to do is, I'm just going to show you how to provide it. Like, just in this electricity utility bill option. Click plus, rename it. What you can do, you can either provide yearly data, or you can provide monthly data, you can provide daily data, as well. They're different kinds of frequency. The most preferred one is, provide monthly data. Let's say, if I start with something like, electricity, city underscore PG&E data. Because, I am in San Francisco, so, electricity is provided by PG&E, here. Consumption unit should be kilowatt hours, that makes sense.

Peak demand, if you want to provide peak demand information, let's say, you know, yes. That's a valid unit. And then, like, you can keep this option start date and end date, all right. Then, click on this option, add new billing period, plus, okay. The start date is 1st January 2017 to 31st January, okay. Let's provide kilowatt hours. I know, 2000 kilowatt hours. Again, there’s, like, you know, some problem with my display, here. You can see those units and those displays are moved somehow. You just need to fix it in your display mode for your computer. But, let's not worry about for this now. You can provide peak, as well. I mean, I'm going to, if you, I want to calibrate my model just for energy consumption. I need not to worry about kilowatt, but, for now, just do it for sake. Cost, there's no information needed for cost. We just need to calibrate only the energy consumption. But, just for sanity, let's provide some information, again. And, keep doing it for all the months, okay. Let's do something really quick, quickly here, okay.

I'm just going to part some, like, you know, random data. Take some time, okay. And then, I can provide a new billing data for the rest of the year, okay. I don't want to spend a lot more time here. But, you got the idea. How to provide the information for your billing data. The last bill is from 1st of April to 31st of December. That's not the right approach, but in case you want to calibrate it properly, you should provide the data for each and every month. Or, like, whatever billing period you have, okay, all right. And, that's it. And, you can save the model, and then, move to the next utility. Like, you know, if you have some gas data, you can also calibrate it for gas, okay. Let's say, it's again from PG&E, and the unit can be the therm CCF, whatever. Like, I’ll just provide therms data, because, in my house I get all the, like, I got the unit of gas as therms, that's what my billing says, bill says.

Let's provide some data. Same way, like, you can either provide for a year, or you can just provide it for a month-to-month basis. For times sake, I'm just going to provide just one data for yearly, for a year, for the whole year, and save the model, okay. Now, we have this calibration, I'm sorry, the utility bill data. And, if I run this simulation here, again, it will show me a new report, actually. Which will have some calibration information. Well, I should have actually, checked whether I need to provide some kind of OpenStudio measure to create that calibration report. Let's just run it real quick.

Meanwhile when I can show you more information, here. If you go to google explorer, and, again, in the OpenStudio  reference page. Like, what I explained, what I showed you earlier. You can see the different resources that I mentioned in my second video, the two weeks back video. Resources that can be used again and again, you just create them once and then reuse them for different components. They can be schedules, schedule set. The difference between schedule and schedule set is, you can have different kind of schedules, something like, occupancy schedule lighting schedule. You can have plug load schedule. If you combine them and create a set kind of thing, you call it schedule set. I will explain to you later.

Then construction, you create it once and assign it to different specimens, or components. Fenestration, space type, different kinds of definition, plug loads, gas, internal mass, lighting, people, and so on, okay. Please remember this resource method. We are going to use it again and again. If you use this resource method, you can actually reduce your workload significantly. Let's go back to your, our OpenStudio interface, again. Looks like this simulation is being finished. Let's go to this, to put in section. And see, right now I don't have any report for a calibration. As I mentioned earlier, like, we have to provide some kind of OpenStudio measure so that we can see the report. If you remember, I explained to you what measures are. They’re basically, kind of, scripts. It reduces your workload, it does something for you. If you remember, in SketchUp interface, we ran those scripts. For example, if you go to extensions, OpenStudio userscripts, alter or add model element. And, if you run this script, window to wall ratio one, it does something really good for you. It reduces your workload significantly.

You have similar kind of scripts in this OpenStudio main interface, as well. I'm going to explain more on this later, but for now let's go to this tab, the third tab from bottom, measures tab. And, let's look for a measure that tells us that, hey, if you implement this measure, you will get this particular report. We need a report for calibration. We need to look for that particular measure. I know it lives in reporting measure, reporting section here, in QAQC. Let me just find out the calibration report. Again, like, you know, let's not get confused here. I just want to implement something real quick. But later, I will explain to you these measures in detail. For now, just like, you know, look for this calibration report, and implement it.

If you don't see these measures on your computer screen. you have to download them first. If you remember, like, I actually asked you to create an account on BCL building component library of NREL. Let me just go back to BCL, again. This is the one I explained to you on my first video. Here, I need to provide my login information. Log in. And then, this is my key here, you just need to copy this key, okay. And in case you are a first-timer, you need to click on these, components of measures. Click on this, find measures, here, okay. If you click on it, and you are a first time user, it will ask you, hey, provide some kind of BCL key. Just copy-paste that key, which is given here on your BCL NREL page, okay. Just copy it, and then, it will allow, actually, copy and paste it, and then, it will allow you to download measures.

These measures, they are very helpful. This is the strongest feature for OpenStudio. Please go through each and every category, here. Check all of them, and click on download, okay. When it finishes download, go to the next screen, which is second, here. You can see, here. And then, check all again, download. When they get downloaded, go to the third screen, then fifth, finish all of them, and then, move to next category. I know it might take maybe like 10 or 15 minutes, but it's worth it guys. You can see all my, like, you know, measures are already been downloaded. I need not to do it again. But, again, if you're a first-time user, click on, check all, download. When they get downloaded, go to the second one, okay. Very important, okay.

They are very helpful, and I'll explain to you what things, what other things they can do it for you, all right. Close down this window for now. And, because I already have all those measures on my computer, I need not to worry about downloading them, again. I already have, like, implemented this calibration report measure. I will explain to you one more measure, here. For example, if you remember, all my results were in SI unit. What if I want to change it to IP? There's another measure in my reporting section. Again, reporting, QAQC, and this one, set output table to IP units. I have made my own measures. I know the measure that you have, that you get from BCL, building component library. It has some error, I have fixed it for you. In case you want this measure, please write it down to us in comments. Or, you can email us to info@simulate.energy.

Let me just type down our new email id for you guys. In case you need to write it down to us, just write to info@simulate.energy. This one, okay. And we’ll definitely reply you back as soon as possible. I will implement this, this output table measure, as well. And, I want IP units. That's inch, pound. I can change it to some other units. But, for now, let's just keep it inch, pound. Again, if you are getting confused, let's not worry about this. You just implement those measures, as what I have showed you, here. And then, I will explain to you more on this. Maybe in the next half an hour or one hour, all right. Run the simulation, here. Again, it will take, maybe like, you know, 15 or 20 seconds, okay. Let me just go to my results, if I forgot something, actually, my notes, sorry.

Let me explain this space type method one more time to you. Why we needed to create those space types. If you remember those space types, they have different kinds of properties. Let's say, if you have office space type, it has different internal load definition. Something like, lighting, plug loads, people. And, they also come with some building reference schedules, okay. You can always edit them later, update them later. Again, starting with this resource method is always good. You have some information on your project, rather than starting everything from scratch. Just bring something, which is appropriate. And then, update them, all right. For example, if I have some space types, and they have some properties assigned to them, well, I can assign this office space type to multiple offices. Maybe, like, five or six of them. What if, if I need to change my lighting load? I just need to go to space type, make some changes. And, those changes would be reflected at each and every office space, all right. That's the like, you know, power of using this resource method, okay.

If you remember this sketch, again, from my last video. I have one building, I have three stories, right. I have assigned my construction set, the first one, at building level. Then, the assigned construction set at building level is based on 22,000 construction, year 2000 construction. But, for story 1 and story 2, I needed to provide new constructions, based on the year. Story 1, was constructed in 1950. And, story 2 was constructed in 1980. Story 1 has three space types, space type. And then, for Story 2 we have, again, three more space types. Same with Story 3. I have assigned this office space type to three spaces, you can see, here. Then conference space type is assigned to conference one space. And then, this restroom space type has been assigned to two spaces here, all right.

These space types, they have some kind of properties. Lighting, plug loads, people, the internal loads, and the schedules, all right. I have assigned those definitions at space type. All these properties are reflected at the space level, as well. In case I need to make changes, I just like, make changes at the space type level. All these changes will be reflected at these multiple spaces. Again, if it's very confusing, don't worry about this. I'm going to explain to you this thing in the next exercise, all right. Let's go back to our OpenStudio interface, and it looks like the simulation has been completed. Go to your result tab. And, now you can see I have this calibration report. Well, you can see I have some calibration happening. Definitely, there is a huge difference between my model and my actual energy consumption, okay. Well, again, this is no, this is the very hypothetical information that I provided to my model.

Let's not worry about this. If you provide all the information properly, if you are working on a real project, definitely, this calibration model will help you out significantly. I have calibration for my kilowatt hours, my kilowatt, kilowatts, the peak demand, and for natural gas, okay. Right now, I don't have any gas related equipment. Like, I don't have any boiler or something, and that's why there is no model energy consumption, there's no blue tab. But what we gonna do here, like, you know, we're gonna do something more later. We are gonna create all the information in our EnergyPlus model. Or, actually, OpenStudio model. Then we will do this calibration one more time, okay. But, you, for now, you got the idea. How to provide the information for a utility bills, okay. That's how the calibration works in OpenStudio.