Scripting Frameworks for Enhancing EnergyPlus Modeling Productivity

Task automation is a great productivity enhancer in any workflow. In building energy modeling, scripting has emerged as a powerful tool for automating both standard tasks such as generating a code-minimum baseline model from a model of a proposed or actual building and for workflow customization. This paper presents four scripting frameworks for EnergyPlus. Eppy makes EnergyPlus input objects accessible as Python objects, allowing them to be manipulated programmatically. Modelkit is an embedded Ruby library that allows modelers to create parameterized templates that instantiate different specific EnergyPlus input files depending on parameter values. OpenStudio Measures provide programmatic access to the OpenStudio object model; that model is translated into an EnergyPlus input file. CBECC uses a custom scripting/rule engine that operates on the Standards Data Dictionary (SDD) building model schema; OpenStudio is used to translate SDD files to EnergyPlus input files. The paper discusses the philosophy behind each system, its architecture and core capabilities, and uses simple modeling tasks to show how each system is used in practice.