Other Features

The model also estimates what end uses are causing the monthly demand charges. This customer had an economizer that was locked open throughout the heating season. That error contributed to a big demand spike for morning warm-up.

Another useful technique to look at buildings over time to determine if there has been a trend. EZ Sim will let you look at two years of billing data.

Hypothetical Baseline

Sometimes you want to judge savings against a case that never actually existed. For example, suppose a supermarket installs energy-efficient lighting at the same time that it installs extra refrigeration cases. It doesn't make sense to compare the old and new bills because the operations have changed. But using the model, we can compute what the old building would have used with added refrigeration. And that is a better baseline to check for lighting savings.

The "hypothetical" baseline is also useful in the case of new energy-efficient construction, where the inefficient building was never built. But we can set up and tune to the new building, then model what an equivalent building would have used without the energy conservation measures.

Useful Tips

EZ Sim will save a summary file that contains just the building data (no calculations). This smaller file is easier to store and email. And it can be used as the starting point for modeling a similar building. We are assembling a library of summary files that can be downloaded from our website.

EZ Sim allows you to specify your own local weather. Push button macros make it easy to load in new weather files. You can easily generate your own files or download at a modest cost from our website.