If Whole Building Analysis, Then Sustainable Design Will Follow |
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By Lauren Browne, ConnectPress Editor
 Bentley Systems Building Shadow Analysis using Hevacomp Software
ISVs are not the only ones with whole-building analysis tools. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sponsors a variety of building energy software tools, some of which are even free. EnergyPlus, a free simulation program reads and writes text files, models heating, cooling, lighting, ventilating and water use. “Energy Plus is thinking to the future about what technologies are coming down the pike, so we can analyze buildings of the future. It’s flexible and has the ability to think about advanced concepts like it allows for flexibility in heating and cooling systems, there are renewable options and it can look at how water flows in a building,” said Torcellini. Additionally DOE sponsors Building Design Advisor, a free program for building decision makers to help with energy-related information, and Energy-10, a simulation and analysis program that is specifically for small commercial and residential buildings and offers daylighting, passive solar heating and energy cooling strategies in the most cost-effective manner. There is also SPARK, in which whole building analysis is done for modeling complex building envelopes and mechanical systems. Torcellini would like to see more design teams “getting all the players on the same page, heading towards the same goal and using some sort of energy simulation so they can come up with the best solutions. We’d like to see this transformation happen. The tools can better engineer the project.”
When to implement whole building analysis has an easy rule. “The earlier the better, and then having those analysis tools throughout the design process is good as well. One method that never works is completing the design and deciding to run building analysis at the last minute,” said Torcellini. Also, knowing the boundaries of too much analysis and not enough analysis are important. According to Torcellini, “there’s a balance between using the tool, the results of that (tool) and good intuition, with the architectural creative liberty to get these things to all to work together.”
No matter how you look at it, whole building analysis warrants elements of sustainable design. Weygant said it best with “as far as sustainable design, you need to be able to perform whole building analysis in order to really truly to provide a sustainable design, because you need to qualify what makes a building sustainable by looking at the building as a whole instead of sum of its parts.”
To see the U.S. DOE’s complete list of the building analysis tools visit http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/tools_directory/alpha_list.cfm.
Lauren Browne is a writer and editor for ConnectPress Ltd. in Santa Fe, NM. She received her BA in English and a minor in journalism from Northern Arizona University.
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| Published 2009-07-13 00:00:00 |
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