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EnergyPlus™ is a whole building energy simulation program that engineers, architects, and researchers use to model both energy consumption—for heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting and plug and process loads—and water use in buildings.[1]

Picotte

Installed Versions

EnergyPlus 9.4.0 is installed on Picotte. Use the modulefile:

energyplus/9.4.0 -- documentation in /ifs/opt/energyplus/9.4.0/Documentation/pdf

N.B. this uses the Intel compiler suite with Intel Python, so it will conflict with other Python modules.

Proteus

Installed Versions

EnergyPlus 9.1.0 for the Intel (Sandy Bridge) nodes, and the new Intel Skylake nodes is installed. Use the modulefile:

energyplus/intel/2019/9.1.0

Both versions are linked to the Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL) for optimal perfomance.

CPU compatibility

Because EnergyPlus is compiled against the Intel MKL, it can run only on the Intel nodes. In your job script, request:

#$ -l vendor=intel

You could, instead, specify the microarchitecture. However, a more restrictive resource request like that would reduce the pool of nodes available to your job, and may result in longer wait times.

Standard Input Files

IDD Files

IDD files are in:

${ENERGYPLUSDIR}/IDD

Weather Files

The weather files provided by EnergyPlus are in:

${ENERGYPLUSDIR}/WeatherData

Notes on Running

  • EnergyPlus can run multithreaded, but NOT multi-node: only request the shm PE
  • EnergyPlus recommends placing input files on a local filesystem, rather than a shared filesystem
    • To do so in a job script, copy the inputs to ${TMPDIR}

Example Job

Here is an example job script, adapted from the EnergyPlus Quick Start guide[2]

#!/bin/bash
#$ -S /bin/bash
#$ -M MYNAMEHERE@drexel.edu
#$ -cwd
#$ -j y
#$ -P MYPROJECTHERE
#$ -q all.q
#$ -pe shm 16
### NOTE to use the new 40-core Skylake nodes, replace the above 2 lines with:
# #$ -q new.q
# #$ -pe shm 40
#$ -l vendor=intel
#$ -l h_rt=2:00:00
#$ -l m_mem_free=1g
#$ -l h_vmem=2g
. /etc/profile.d/modules.sh
module load shared
module load proteus
### NOTE to use the new 40-core Skylake nodes, replace "module load proteus" with "module load proteus-rh68"
module load sge/univa
module load energyplus/intel/2019/9.1.0

### NOTE This example job copies all inputs to a temporary local directory,
###      generates output in that same directory, and then copis all
###      outputs back to the working (shared) directory. This was the
###      recommendation from EnergyPlus documentation.
###      However, this does not seem to be necessary for small jobs.
###      As the amount of input and/or output data grows, this may
###      be necessary

### Copy all input files to the job-specific temporary directory, given by the environment variable TMPDIR
### NB this directory and its contents will be automatically deleted at end of job
cp $ENERGYPLUSDIR/IDD/Energy+.idd $TMPDIR
cp $ENERGYPLUSDIR/WeatherData/USA_IL_Chicago-OHare.Intl.AP.725300_TMY3.epw $TMPDIR
cp $ENERGYPLUSDIR/ExampleFiles/5ZoneAirCooled.idf $TMPDIR

### Change directory to the TMPDIR (i.e. local directory) and run.
### All output is generated in that directory, so have to copy it back
### to the SGE_O_WORKDIR before it gets automatically deleted
cd $TMPDIR
energyplus -i Energy+.idd -w USA_IL_Chicago-OHare.Intl.AP.725300_TMY3.epw 5ZoneAirCooled.idf
cp eplus* $SGE_O_WORKDIR

Documentation

A local copy of the documentation, in PDF format, is here:

${ENERGYPLUSDIR}/doc

Online documentation is here:

https://energyplus.net/documentation

Example Files

The example files provided by EnergyPlus are in:

${ENERGYPLUSDIR}/ExampleFiles

See Also

References

[1] EnergyPlus web site

[2] EnergyPlus - Quick Start Guide