15 - 2 Side Car Measures - OS Measures

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Hi everyone. For this second session of this OpenStudio measure class, we will talk more about the sidecar measures. And, before we move to the next section of this class, I want to make sure that you understood the workflow of these OpenStudio measures. Please make sure to go through each and every measure category, here. And, apply it, at least apply them once on your energy model and see what they do. For this class, I cannot apply all the measures. But, you know, I mean, you got the good idea how these measures work. And, in the next section, or the next session for HVAC components, we will definitely run more measures. We will work on some whole building measures, economics, and reporting measures, as well, all right. For now please go through the envelope section, lighting section, equipment, people, and run each and every measure and see what kind of changes to do.

Again, these measures are very helpful. As an energy modeler with experience of five years on OpenStudio, I can tell you, these measures can reduce your workload significantly. They are very, very helpful, all right. I'm going to cancel it, now. And, I'm going to jump on the next section, which is how to apply these, are always, these always on measures, or sidecar measures. Again, as I mentioned to you earlier, when you apply measures in this section, here, measure section, they work as sidecar. They don't make the permanent changes in your model. But, they only execute when you run the simulation, all right. Again, when you finish the simulation, you still have your original profile. But, these measures will be attached to your model as sidecar. If you remember, in my previous class, I actually applied this, apply EnergyPlus measure, which actually changed the unit system for your outputs, okay. You can see this is a kind of EnergyPlus measure.

It basically make changes on your IDF file. Then, I also provided one calibration report measure, okay. If you remember, we provide some utility bills, and we wanted to check whether we have some calibration happening for our runs. Like, now, I'm going to explain some more measures, here. In library, you see all those measures, what you saw in this, apply measure section. Plus, you now have EnergyPlus as well as reporting measures too. OpenStudio measures go in this section. EnergyPlus go in this EnergyPlus measure section. And, same with reporting measures. For example, in envelope section, I want to provide some day lighting, or, let's say, infiltration component. What I want to do, I want to reduce this space infiltration by percentage. Again, I'm going to drag it and drop it over this OpenStudio measure section. Drop it. And now, click on it.

And then, you can do some changes. You can read the description, it says, the measure will reduce space infiltration rates by requested percentage. You can do it in the entire building here, in inputs, or in a particular space type. Let's say you just want to do it in restroom. You want to reduce infiltration by, let's say, 50%, all right. That's good enough, okay. It will only make the changes on your model. When you are in the simulation, if you notice, when we applied this measure, it didn't do that script execution for you. It will execute itself only when you go to this run tab, here, and run this simulation. Very important, okay. Let's apply some more measures. I want to do some changes in electric lighting. In lighting equipment, I want to add additional lighting. Let's say, I want to add an exterior light, here. Again, go to this OpenStudio measure section. Drag and drop. You can bring it up or you can bring it down, either way it's fine, doesn't matter if you run this simulation.

And, let's provide some exterior lighting design power of, let's say, 500 watt. It should be a category, so, let's see if facade lighting is a nice category. You want to remove existing light, maybe yes. And, you can provide all the life cycle cost analysis. I don't want to change those values right now, it's all right, okay. And now, I'm going to apply some more measures. Let's say you want to apply, so, I applied definition, okay. Let's apply it again here, in the OpenStudio  measure section. Go to inputs here, by clicking on the measure. Choose the light definition you want to replace. Let's say I want to replace this closed office light definition with, let's say, lobby light definition. Just like, you know, something, something to work upon, for now. And now, I'm going, I'm going to apply some measures for EnergyPlus. Let's say, what else do we have here.

Again, I have millions, hundreds of measures. And, they do a lot of things. Make sure that you go through all these measures and make some changes by yourself, okay. Please practice them.  They are very helpful. I want to do something like, insert ground domain based on E+ object. Let's see what it does. It says in the measure, insert the ground domain basement object. Well, you can provide some basement values using this measure. I don't think I'm familiar with this measure right now, that much. I'm going to like, save everyone's time here and look for something else. What else can we do, here. You can see like, you know, similar to OpenStudio measure there’s another measure to reduce infiltration flow rate per floor area. This is a kind of EnergyPlus measure. Let's just apply this and see what it does. It says, set the flow rate per floor area value for all infiltration objects.

It asks you flow per zone floor area. We can just go add something, let's say, 0.02. I think that should be good enough, okay. It's a kind of measure, it brings all those like, infiltration values on flow area basis. And then, like, what else do we have. In lighting control, I have some more BCL measures. I'm sorry, the OpenStudio measures. In lighting section I have some measures. In equipment controls I have some measures. Like, some desktop power management, reduce night time electric equipment loads. You can actually bring this kind of measure, and you can change the schedules, as well, easily. For example, it says like, hey, pick an electrical equipment definition, okay. It will look for the schedule associated with this definition. And, it will reduce the schedule. It will totally shrink your schedule down by, let's say, 0.2, which is 20%, okay.

It says apply schedule changes to weekday and before profiles. Yes, that's what it does. There are a lot more values, here. Like, hey, weekday/default time to start night time fraction. You can change this 18, which is like 6 p.m., to, let's say, 20. Which changes to 8 p.m. And, the same thing with this weekday to end night time fraction. Let's say 6 a.m. What happens between 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. It will reduce the schedule, or it will shrink down the schedule by 20%. Again, very important measure to shrink down your schedules, in case you know what you're doing there, all right. This is kind of a OpenStudio measure, again. Let's see, what else can we do. In service hot water, do we see something interesting? Let's see, let me just move my, go to webinar, icons. And, you can see, in water heating, I have some measures. In whole building, I had a lot more measures, here. Space types, let's say, I can provide some schedules I can change the run period.

For example, if I bring this, one more measure, OpenStudio measure, I can change my return period. Like, you know, instead of running the simulation for 12 months, like, all the 8,760 hours. I can define where I will start my simulation, and when it will end. Let's say, if you just want to do it for in January, you can just provide values here, okay. And, you want to end in January, again. Same thing, okay. I'm just going to remove this measure, for now. And, move to the next category, which is, let's say, economics, okay. In case you want to do some kind of life cycle cost analysis, you can provide some values. You can provide tariff rates. For example, if I want to use some utility companies tariff rate, which is kind of an EnergyPlus measure, again. Again, tariffs are like, you know, they’re EnergyPlus measures. They will make changes on IDF files.

You can select the tariff rate, and a gas tariff, too. It's a lot of utility companies, they create their own measures. For example, Austin Energy does the same, Duke does the same, a lot of other utility companies too, okay. You can provide some flat rates, as well, in tariffs. For example, if I remove the first measure for related tariff. If I can provide more tariff rates, something like, electric rate for kilowatt hours, gas rate, and a lot of other values, okay. And, what if, if I want to put some reporting measure, now. I also want to see a standard report or maybe, let's say, generic QAQC report. I can totally bring it, here. We are going to cover these QAQC reports and other stuff in at the end of this OpenStudio webinar section. I think, one of the last sessions that we will cover in August. Like, you know, if you don't understand it right now, it's fine, we are going to cover it in detail later. But, for now let's just work on these measures, how these measures work. Again, as I mentioned I can't cover each and every measure, but it's always good to understand the workflow. And then, work on it by yourself later, okay.

I have provided these sidecar measures. They don't make any permanent changes. But now, if I run the simulation, they will work properly, okay. I'm going to run the simulation. And, meanwhile I will just go to my C directory. And, go to users, go to my folder, and BCL, again. If I open any of the measure, let's say, I want to see how these measures look, let's say this one. You can see there is a file, measure.rb. If you open it Notepad++, you can see it's a human readable file. This is the measure, like, basically, at the economizer damper leakage. You can see, you can read it. It's very user friendly it seems. Please go through the these measures. You can see this measure is only 75 lines. Like, you know, it's a very easy measure. If you read through, line by line, you can definitely understand the workflow, okay. I think like, you know, we have covered a good amount of information for this.

Looks like the simulation worked properly. If you go to the report section, you can see there's a generic QAQC measure report, as well. Which I, like, implemented in the reporting section, okay. You can see like, it does QAQC for you. For example, let’s say, like, do you think the EUI numbers are in a reasonable region? It says it's not, so there's a flag, here. It means you need to check, here. You need to check your inputs. You need to check a lot of things, okay. Then it says like, mechanical system part efficiency. It has some information. I'm not going to read everything, here. But, you got the idea. Please run these measures on your computer. Please, like, play around with them. They do a lot more things, here. You need not to worry about applying those HVAC measures, because that's what we will do in our next session. But yeah, with other stuff, please feel free to play around. And, in case you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us, all right. Thank you. Thanks so much, guys. Take care. Bye.