Boosting building performance with cloud-based energy simulation

Boosting building performance
with cloud-based energy simulation

| Feb 13, 2015

Earlier this week, San Francisco-based Autodesk hosted a webinar on EnergyPlus Cloud, led by its own Krishnan Gowri, PhD, LEED AP, principal engineer and building performance analyst. The recording of the presentation is now available online and you can view it here. Thanks to all who attended and asked some great questions on the line. We hope you enjoyed it and learned about the new EnergyPlus Cloud features.

For those of you unable to attend, here it is...

During the webinar, Autodesk also conducted a few live polls. Similar to its research on the early adopters of EnergyPlus Cloud, the firm was interested in what role attendees identified most as, their current usage of EnergyPlus and EnergyPlus Cloud, the typical amount of time it took for them to perform an EnergyPlus simulation, their preferred authoring tool, and how they use EnergyPlus simulation results. Details of their responses below.

36% attendees identified as energy modelers, followed by 24% as architects, and 16% as engineers. This trend is similar with what we saw with the early adopters. 

44% of attendees responded as not currently using EnergyPlus or EnergyPlus Cloud, compared to the 15% who have used both. 

Of the attendees who use EnergyPlus, most are waiting between 1 minute and 60 minutes for EnergyPlus simulation results.  

Among the attendees who use EnergyPlus, 31% of them are using OpenStudio / SketchUp Plugin to author their IDF file, followed by a combination of Other applications, and DesignBuilder.

Finally, the top ways attendees are using their EnergyPlus results are for:

• Early design decisions and comparing design options
• High performance building design
• Existing building energy analysis 

This is also representative of our early adopter findings. 

For any questions, comments, or feedback, please write to us at labs.energypluscloud@autodesk.com.