Theoretical Study of Whole Building Simulation

With the increasing cost of energy in general, and in the building in particular, which leads to an increasing interest in energy efficient building design. To achieve this, The whole building energy simulation programs are more and more employed in the first step in the design process to help architectures and engineers to take the best decision, and to choose which alternatives design are more energy efficient and cost effective. One of the leading institutions, which is developing programs for building energy simulation, is the United states department of energy DOE. Earlier they launched DOE program, the most popular program used for whole energy building simulation. The program DOE 2.1e uses as interface EnergyPro or visual DOE, The second version of DOE 2.2 engine uses Autodesk GBS5 (ecoTect), and eQUEST. Meanwhile EnergyPlus uses the interfaces, Bentely Hevacomp, Design Builder and open studio. One of the newest generations of whole building energy simulation programs, developed by the U.S. DOE is EnergyPlus, which is developed version of DOE-2. A theoretical study using previous researcher‘s work, to compare the advantages and disadvantages of different whole building energy simulation programs, have been done. Using some utility data from literature, to check the closeness of the simulation program with a real heat and energy flows in building. This theoretical study confirms the previous researchers conclusions that eQuest is most easy program to use and the quicker in producing results that help architects and engineers to take the most energy efficient design during the preparation phase