Abstract
Traditional energy modeling methods are usually time-consuming and labour-intensive, so energy simulation is rarely performed early in building design. If a Building Energy Model (BEM) can be seamlessly generated from a Building Information Modeling (BIM) model, the energy simulation process can be much more efficient and better integrated in design. The concerns about BIM to BEM data transfer integrity and the reliability of simulation results are preventing wider adoption of BIM-based energy simulation. This study aimed to address these two obstacles and increase energy modelers’ confidence in using BIM for energy analysis. Green Building Studio (GBS) was used to simulate energy use and generate eQuest and EnergyPlus input files. Two building types were modeled in Revit with various iterations and BEM input files downloaded from GBS were compared line by line to identify and classify discrepancies. Simulation results from BIM-based and traditional modeling were compared to test reliability and showed unexpectedly good agreement across methods.
Highlights
As one of the participating nations of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21), Canada has encouraged its provinces to establish greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target and action plans
2.4.3 Prevalent Building Energy Modeling (BEM) software and compatibility with Building Information Modeling (BIM) There are 133 BEM tools listed on Building Energy Simulation Tools web directory (BEST-D), which was hosted by the US Department of Energy (DOE) until late 2014 and is currently managed by International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA-USA) (IBPSA 2016)
There are an increasing number of BIM-based energy analysis tools could have been considered, e.g. Revit IES plug-in, Revit DesignBuilder plug-in, or SketchUp OpenStudio (EnergyPlus) plug-in, but due to time limitations, only Green Building Studio (GBS) was investigated for the following three reasons: 1. GBS eliminates the challenge of software interoperability issues: o It is integrated within Autodesk Revit, which is the most widely-used BIM software across all disciplines; o It generates three BEM input files and offers the most flexibility in testing data transfer across platforms: (1) Green Building Extensible Markup Language (gbXML), which is used by an increasing number of BEM tools, (2) INP for eQuest, and (3) IDF for EnergyPlus
Summary
As one of the participating nations of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21), Canada has encouraged its provinces to establish greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction target and action plans. The lack of successful case studies showcasing energy modeling’s positive impacts (AIA 2015) is partially responsible for the insufficient adoption, but the considerable amount of time and effort demanded by energy modeling using the traditional method is a likely factor because it requires to re-create the geometry in a native BEM tool based on architectural drawings and define these properties in detail (Gane and Haymaker 2010) This is where BIM can improve the modeling efficiency because the BIM model already contains a good amount of information (e.g. geometry and construction) required by energy modeling and eliminates the time consuming and labour intensive remodeling process and facilitates repeated energy modeling as the design progresses (Ham and Golparvar-Fard 2015, Kim, et al 2015).
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