Energy and cost assessment of packaged ice energy storage implementations using OpenStudio Measures
Not Available
Heine, Karl (ORCID:0000000320776634)↗
SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Results for “OpenStudio”
Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Assessment of Existing OpenStudio Measures: Reviews, Interviews, and Future Developments
OpenStudio Measure development is continuously in progress and greatly propelled by the collaborative efforts within the building energy modeling community. To ensure the widespread adoption and benefit of OpenStudio Measures, developers must understand the current status of Measure development and the needs of OpenStudio Measure users. The first step involves a comprehensive review of existing content to prevent redundancy and gain insights into how OpenStudio Measures are used in the building energy modeling community. This knowledge can then be integrated into the Measure development process, and the expertise of practitioners and OpenStudio Measure users can be leveraged to shape future Measures. Numerous OpenStudio Measures have been created and shared on the Building Component Library (BCL). The BCL is an open-source repository housing various OpenStudio-related resources, including building component blocks, descriptive metadata, and Measures describing modifications to building energy models. The OpenStudio Measures in BCL encompass a wide range of energy conservation Measures from basic lighting power reduction to complex HVAC model transformation. They also enable users to generate customized reports and facilitate the integration of energy simulation with other analytical processes. This report presents review of 272 currently available OpenStudio Measures in BCL. The OpenStudio Measures were reviewed by category and subcategory. These Measures are summarized by their functionalities and keywords. To gain insights into how OpenStudio Measures are used in building energy modeling community, interviews were conducted. A total of 12 interview responses were collected from 6 individuals in the industry and 6 individuals in academia. The knowledge acquired from reviewing the existing Measures and interview results will be integrated into the Measure development process, and the expertise of practitioners and OpenStudio Measure users will be leveraged to shape future Measures.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
A Framework for Daylighting Optimization in Whole Buildings with OpenStudio
We present a toolkit and workflow for leveraging the OpenStudio (Guglielmetti et al. 2010) platform to perform daylighting analysis and optimization in a whole building energy modeling (BEM) context. We have re-implemented OpenStudio's integrated Radiance and EnergyPlus functionality as an OpenStudio Measure. The OpenStudio Radiance Measure works within the OpenStudio Application and Parametric Analysis Tool, as well as the OpenStudio Server large scale analysis framework, allowing a rigorous daylighting simulation to be performed on a single building model or potentially an entire population of programmatically generated models. The Radiance simulation results can automatically inform the broader building energy model, and provide dynamic daylight metrics as a basis for decision. Through introduction and example, this paper illustrates the utility of the OpenStudio building energy modeling platform to leverage existing simulation tools for integrated building energy performance simulation, daylighting analysis, and reportage.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
OPENSTUDIO® [SWR-07-40]
OpenStudio® is a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) collection of software tools to support whole building energy modeling using EnergyPlus and advanced daylight analysis using Radiance. OpenStudio is an open source (LGPL) project to facilitate community development, extension, and private sector adoption. OpenStudio includes graphical interfaces along with a Software Development Kit (SDK). In addition to the graphical interface, OpenStudio allows building researchers and software developers to quickly get started through its multiple entry levels, including access through C++, Ruby, and C#. Users can leverage the Ruby interface to create OpenStudio Measures that can be easily shared and applied to OpenStudio Models. OPENSTUDIO® IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ALLIANCE FOR SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, LLC, THE MANAGER AND OPERATOR OF THE NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY.
Ball, Brian↗
OpenStudio® Standards [SWR-07-40]
OpenStudio® Standards is a Ruby Gem library that extends the OpenStudio SDK. It has four main use-cases: Provide higher level methods to help BEM users and developers to create OpenStudio models from existing geometry, or programmatically generated geometry Create typical building models in OpenStudio format Create a code baseline model from a proposed model Check a model against a code/standard openstudio-standards previously supported making the DOE/PNNL prototype buildings in OpenStudio format. This has since been deprecated, as the DOE/PNNL prototypes are intended for specific code comparisons under the Energy Policy Act and are not intended to accurately represent typical existing or new buildings. While openstudio-standards still creates typical buildings, these are not the same as the DOE/PNNL prototypes.
Lopez, Phylroy↗
OpenStudio® Server [SWR-07-40]
OpenStudio® Server is a web application and distributed computing tool, which is the backbone of the OpenStudio Analysis Framework (OSAF). It is intended to make parametric analysis of building energy models accessible to architects, engineers, and designers via the OpenStudio PAT GUI or the OpenStudio Analysis Gem. OpenStudio Server analyses are defined by PAT projects or OSA's. Each analysis may include many OpenStudio simulations, as determined by project configuration.
Long, Nicholas↗
Legacy OpenStudio® SketchUp Plug-in [SWR-07-40]
The Legacy OpenStudio® SketchUp Plug-in makes it easy to create and edit the building geometry in EnergyPlus® input files. This free plug-in also allows you to launch EnergyPlus simulations and view the results without leaving the SketchUp 3D drawing program. Note that active OpenStudio development has moved from the Legacy OpenStudio Plug-in to the more comprehensive OpenStudio suite of tools and libraries found here: https://github.com/NREL/OpenStudio. More information can be found at http://openstudio.net. The OpenStudio Legacy Plug-in has been relaunched as Euclid by Big Ladder Software, the project's new homepage is http://bigladdersoftware.com/projects/euclid/. The Legacy OpenStudio Plug-in was created by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy as an interface to the EnergyPlus simulation engine. Refer to the EnergyPlus webpage at energyplus.gov for an overview of the concept and features. User support is available via the community moderated question and answer resource unmethours.com.
Macumber, Dan↗
The Life Cycle of an OpenStudio Measure: Development, Testing, Distribution, and Application
An OpenStudio Measure is a script that can manipulate an OpenStudio model and associated data to apply energy conservation measures (ECMs), run supplemental simulations, or visualize simulation results. The OpenStudio software development kit (SDK) and accessibility of the Ruby scripting language makes measure authorship accessible to both software developers and energy modelers. This paper discusses the life cycle of an OpenStudio Measure from development, testing, and distribution, to application.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
OpenStudio® Resources [SWR-07-40]
This repository includes a suite of simulation tests that can be used to validate new OpenStudio® model objects as well as ensure that objects continue to work after they are added. Each new OpenStudio Model object should ideally have two simulation tests associated with it: - a Ruby one which verifies the Ruby API and, - an OSM one that verifies the OSM file can be loaded with future versions of OpenStudio. Both tests should result in a simulation-ready OpenStudio Model that can be simulated using EnergyPlus®. Both of these tests are located in the /model/simulationtests directory, the easiest way to add a new test is to find a related existing test and modify it. When new tests are added they must be added to the model_tests.rb file.
Benne, Kyle↗
OpenStudio®-MCP [SWR-26-035]
OpenStudio®-MCP is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets AI assistants perform building energy modeling through natural language. Rather than requiring users to learn the OpenStudio® SDK, EnergyPlus® scripting, or Ruby/Python automation, the server translates conversational requests into sequences of tool calls that create models, design HVAC systems, run simulations, and extract results — all within a single chat session. The server's 124 tools are organized into a skills architecture where each skill encapsulates a domain of building energy modeling (envelope, HVAC, loads, weather, simulation, results) behind typed, LLM-friendly interfaces. High-leverage operations like applying ASHRAE 90.1 baseline systems or generating standards-compliant typical buildings are exposed as single tool calls that internally wire dozens of OpenStudio® objects. Bundled measures from ComStock™ and Openstudio® -common-measures-gem are wrapped with dedicated tools and typed arguments rather than exposed through a generic measure interface, so AI models get consistent, error-resistant recipes without needing to discover measure arguments at runtime. A key design decision is structured results extraction: six SQL-based tools return surgical ~300–1,000 token responses (end-use breakdowns, envelope summaries, HVAC sizing, timeseries data) instead of requiring the AI to parse ~100K-token raw HTML reports, making iterative design exploration practical within context window limits. The codebase is designed as a reference implementation — explicit, well-commented, and modular — so that other simulation engines (EnergyPlus® standalone, TRNSYS, DOE-2) can use it as a template for building their own MCP servers.
Ball, Brian [National Laboratory of the Rockies (N↗
High-Level Model Articulation with BuildingSync and OpenStudio
The use of the BuildingSync schema for describing the contents of buildings is becoming more common with its recent integration into the Audit Template tool as well as ASHRAE’s Building Energy Quotient (bEQ) web portal. Although BuildingSync was initially created to store and transfer data related to building energy audits (as defined by ASHRAE Standard 211), it has since been expanded to store the data needed to articulate fully defined physics-based building energy models. BuildingSync combined with abstracted high-level input methods defined in OpenStudio’s Standards project and the newly developed BuildingSync gem allows BuildingSync eXtensible Markup Language (XML) (Bray, Paoli, Sperberg-McQueen, Maler, Eve (Sun Microsystems, & Francois, 2008) document to be converted into OpenStudio models. Automatic generation of a building energy model from data collected during an audit 1) eliminates the need to separately generate an energy model, 2) improves consistency between model generation, and 3) simplifies evaluation of various energy efficiency measures. This manuscript will discuss this open-source project, including: development of the validation infrastructure necessary to provide formalized expectations of informational requirements for BuildingSync documents; development of the BuildingSync gem for translation of BuildingSync documents to OpenStudio models as well as example implementations; and finally, the manuscript will elaborate on the advantages and disadvantages of using high-level models generated from BuildingSync as surrogates to detailed models.
30 DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗
OpenStudio® Analysis Gem [SWR-07-40]
The OpenStudio® Analysis Gem is used to communicate files to the OpenStudio Distributed Analysis. The purpose of this gem is to generate the analysis.json file, analysis.zip, and communicate with the server to upload the simulations. This gem does not create the cluster. To manage cloud resources use the OpenStudio Analysis Framework Helm Charts.
Long, Nicholas↗
Initial OpenStudio Profiling Results
OpenStudio’s performance has not historically been an area of much work, but as it has successfully replaced ad hoc model generation solutions, the performance of the software is more and more central to continuing success. This report describes an initial effort to profile OpenStudio, describes the problems encountered, the solutions to those problems, and some early recommendations for further work should funding become available. The approach taken here is to use special software, referred to as profilers, to assess the code and how it executes. This approach is more appropriate for this kind of software than the checkpoint-style timing that is often done with numerical codes. Profiling was most successful on the MacOS platform, where Apple’s Instruments software was able to decipher the complexities of OpenStudio’s command line execution of a workflow. Even with the limited exploration of performance done here, the team quickly ran into limitations imposed on the code by the stateless architecture, and the team recommends an evaluation of this architecture as a good next step to improve performance.
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
City Scale Modeling with OpenStudio
Assessing the impact of energy efficiency technologies at a district or city scale is of great interest to local governments, real estate developers, utility companies, and policymakers. This paper describes a flexible framework that can be used to create and run district and city scale building energy simulations. The framework is built around the new OpenStudio City Database (CityDB). Building footprints, building height, building type, and other data can be imported from public records or other sources. Missing data can be inferred or assigned from a statistical sampling of other datasets. Once all required data is available, OpenStudio Measures are used to create starting point energy models and to model energy efficiency measures for each building. Together this framework allows a user to pose several scenarios such as 'what if 30% of the commercial retail buildings added rooftop solar' or 'what if all elementary schools converted to ground source heat pumps' and then visualize the impacts at a district or city scale. This paper focuses on modeling existing building stock using public records. However, the framework is capable of supporting the evaluation of new construction, district systems, and the use of proprietary data sources.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
OpenStudio: A Platform for Ex Ante Incentive Programs
Many utilities operate programs that provide ex ante (up front) incentives for building energy conservation measures (ECMs). A typical incentive program covers two kinds of ECMs. ECMs that deliver similar savings in different contexts are associated with pre-calculated 'deemed' savings values. ECMs that deliver different savings in different contexts are evaluated on a 'custom' per-project basis. Incentive programs often operate at less than peak efficiency because both deemed ECMs and custom projects have lengthy and effort-intensive review processes--deemed ECMs to gain confidence that they are sufficiently context insensitive, custom projects to ensure that savings are claimed appropriately. DOE's OpenStudio platform can be used to automate ex ante processes and help utilities operate programs more efficiently, consistently, and transparently, resulting in greater project throughput and energy savings. A key concept of the platform is the OpenStudio Measure, a script that queries and transforms building energy models. Measures can be simple or surgical, e.g., applying different transformations based on space-type, orientation, etc. Measures represent ECMs explicitly and are easier to review than ECMs that are represented implicitly as the difference between a with-ECM and without-ECM models. Measures can be automatically applied to large numbers of prototype models--and instantiated from uncertainty distributions--facilitating the large scale analysis required to develop deemed savings values. For custom projects, Measures can also be used to calibrate existing building models, to automatically create code baseline models, and to perform quality assurance screening.
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
OpenStudio Development, Maintenance, and Support
BEM is a key decision support tool for energy efficiency, demand flexibility, and electrification at the building and building stock levels. The OpenStudio SDK maximizes the value of BEM by enhancing the productivity, consistency, and transparency with which it is applied. OpenStudio enables BEM experts to encapsulate domain and process knowledge in such a way that makes it usable by a range of stakeholders.
BEM↗
OpenStudio® Fault Models Gem [SWR-15-23]
Overview of the OpenStudio® Fault Models Gem: Creating a comprehensive library of OpenStudio® fault models. Features: - Physics-based fault impact simulation within the capability of EnergyPlus®/OpenStudio® - Fault intensity implementation simulating how severe faults are (e.g., how much portion is fouled in the condenser heat exchanger) and estimating the impact of a fault in different fault intensities. - Fault evolution implementation simulating evolving/increasing fault intensity through certain period of time. Future goals: - what are common/typical faults in different sample spaces (e.g., HVAC system type, building operation type, building location etc.)? - how often (e.g., incidence and prevalence) faults occur in different sample spaces (e.g., HVAC system type, building operation type, building location etc.)?
Frank, Stephen↗
OpenStudio® Energy Rating Index (ERI) Workflow (SWR-18-72)
The OpenStudio®-ERI project allows calculating an Energy Rating Index (ERI) using the Department of Energy's open-source OpenStudio®/EnergyPlus® simulation platform. The building description is provided in an HPXML file format. The project supports: - ANSI/RESNET/ICC 301© Standard for the Calculation and Labeling of the Energy Performance of Dwelling and Sleeping Units using an Energy Rating Index - ENERGY STAR Certification System for Homes and Apartments Using an ERI Compliance Path - IECC ERI Compliance Alternative (Section R406) - DOE ZERH Certification Using an ERI Compliance Path For more information on running simulations, generating HPXML files, etc., please visit the documentation at https://openstudio-eri.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
Horowitz, Scott↗