Design Tools
In our work we oftentimes find recurring barriers to achieving energy savings in buildings. Sometimes we are successful in securing funding to create tools that will help to remove these barriers. The energy efficiency design tools available here provide design teams with information to support improved decision making in early design stages.
As of March 2021 if a link to a design tool does not work it has not been posted yet or is currently under maintenance and will be available soon.
Disclaimer
All the design tools below are published with good faith and general purpose information. We assume NO RESPONSIBILITY for the correct use of our design tools or accessories. We will assume NO RESPONSIBILITY for errors, suggested reccomendations or design decesions made as a result of the use or lack of use of our design tools and accessories. All design tool use is at the responsibility of the user.
Sustainable Design & Practice Benefits
Series of infographics to communicate sustainable design & practice Benefits of five different building types for their bottom line impact on efficiency for each building type.
LM-83 Three-phase Daylight Simulation Script
Annual simulation of dynamic/complex fenestration systems under LM-83 guidelines. This script will generate its own folder structure beyond the starting directories required, which are outlined below.
CBECS Data Visualization Infographics
Series of infographics to communicate how four different building types consume energy on both a regional and national level. The data used to create them has been gathered from The Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS).
Climate Design Resources - 1st & 2nd Generation Tool Sets
Series of climate design resources to help assist in the conceptual and early design of passive strategies. Through their support, the UI-IDL has developed two generations of spreadsheet calculators that are capable of analyzing building loads and energy consumption impacts of a range of different design strategies over three reference cities.
Daylight Pattern Guide
The Daylighting Pattern Guide is the newest offering in the Advanced Buildings suite of tools and resources to help design teams create high performance commercial buildings. This no-cost, interactive design tool uses a combination of real-world built examples and advanced simulation to set the stage for substantial reductions in lighting power consumption and overall building energy use.
The Climate Responsive Design Web Tool
Designed to graphically illustrate the feasibility and potential energy benefits of several climate responsive design strategies. The tool is intended to help designers and owners make correct early decisions that will result in buildings that are more energy efficient. The output of the tool are graphic data plots designed to illustrate not only conventional climate data, such as temperature and relative humidity.
Thermal Energy Savings Tabulator (TEST)
Provide designers, engineers, and manufacturers a quick and easy way to calculate energy savings from the application of different heat pump HVAC technologies early in the design process. Specifically, the tool supports analysis of air-source heat pumps (ASHP), water-source heat pumps (WSHP), and variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems.
Infiltration Equations & Conversions
A key factor in building heat gainand lass may be the infiltration rate, or the rate at which outdoor air is exchanged with condititoned interior air through the envelope. This spreadsheet tool outlines a set of simplified equations aimed at converting typical, real world infiltration measurements into metrics that can be input into EnergyPlus.
Construction Insulation Value Calculator
This spreadsheet is designed to calculate insulation values of individual material layers and whole constructions of EnergyPlus objects.
EnergyPlus Fan Energy Calculator
This spreadsheet calculates fan power for both baseline and proposed condition, AND outputs input values required for fan specification.
CBECS Micro Master v2
This file contains a good portion of the CBECS microdata, which can be filtered for benchmarking and goal setting functions.
Copyright © idlboise.com All rights reserved.
