SCE Building Energy Simulation Roadmap

Southern California Edison (SCE) is a California leader in the subject of building energy modeling (BEM); having previously commissioned and provided industry training for tools such as eQUEST, EnergyPro, AGI32, SPOT and Dynamic Radiance. In turn, SCE's customer programs have long relied on BEM tools. SCE’s programs use modeling tools to demonstrate energy code compliance, calculate margins of compliance for customized programs such as Savings By Design, calculate energy savings for deemed programs, and evaluate new emerging technologies. Now, statewide policy changes and industry demands are quickly transforming California’s BEM landscape. The California Energy Commission (CEC) recently modernized Title-24’s refernence engines for demonstrating code compliance, the State continues to aggressively push for new construction to be Zero Net Energy (ZNE), and the building industry’s dependence on predictive modeling continues to increase. The American Institute of Architects boldy proclaimed in their 2013 Progress Report that: “…design responsive to energy simulation is the solution to meeting current and increasing carbon reduction goals.” At the same time, the US Department of Energy (DOE) is in the process of laying a foundation for BEM nationally by prioritizing initiatives that will further increase the use of BEM. The BEM industry in general show a trend towards open-source, developer-neutral, and computationally sophisticated tools. Software built-as-a-platform allows for iterative updates and improvements. Yet this also means that the BEM market is constantly evolving and the need to support customers in this space is growing. All of these developments, among others, have created a timely opportunity for SCE to assess involvement with BEM tools and to strategically plan towards optimized programmatic investments to support SCE customer needs. Accordingly, SCE contracted with TRC Energy Services (TRC) to create this SCE BEM Roadmap (Roadmap). The primary goals of this work are to promote transparency and cross-collaboration amongst SCE’s customer programs, optimize future expenditures and resources on BEM tools, and identify alignments with regulatory requirements, statewide policies, and industry trajectories. To develop the Roadmap, TRC interviewed key members of SCE’s staff, industry stakeholders, attended DOE workshops, and incorporated findings from parallel industry-wide planning efforts. TRC conducted a total of nine separate in-depth interviews with SCE program staff, as well as two industry focus groups with nationwide leaders on the subject of BEM. Based on extensive market research, TRC created a decision-making framework to guide SCE’s future investment in BEM tools. This framework aligns with larger industry trajectories, seeks to create the clear value proposition to customers, and leverages SCE’s existing CP&S Product Governance Process (a process for incorporating new ideas, technologies and measures into SCE’s portfolio of customer programs). The pillars of this decision-making framework are as follows: -SCE Product Governance: SCE should use the existing CP&S Product Governance Process for determining future involvements with BEM-related projects. This process promotes transparency, accountability, and supports methodical coordination across SCE’s portfolio of customer programs. -SCE BEM Sub-Committee: Upon submittal to the CP&S Product Governance Process, BEM-related projects should be reviewed on an as-needed basis by a BEM sub-committee, consisting of SCE subject matter experts (among others). This includes referencing the project in question with SCE’s existing portfolio to help optimize expenditures and avoid duplicate work. Members of the BEM sub-committee should be up-to-date with industry trajectories and significant BEM-related efforts relevant to SCE. -Leverage Market Momentum: SCE seeks to participate in BEM projects and developments that have the largest ratepayer benefit. One way to do this is by leveraging market momentum and contributing to BEM markets that have upstream policy and industry support. For example, EnergyPlus™ is a free, open-source simulation engine that is federally funded and is the workhorse for a variety of existing BEM tools – including CA’s energy code compliance tool CBECC-Com. Supporting software frameworks that use EnergyPlus broadens the opportunity for a larger number of end-users to benefit. -Open Source, Non-Proprietary: SCE BEM-related projects that are used to support customers should be open-source and non-proprietary. Source code and calculation methodologies should be made publicly available to support transparency and ongoing incremental developments by an open market, and to avoid SCE dependencies on vendors with black box developments. -Avoid Commercialism: User interfaces change frequently and operate in a highly competitive market, thus development contributions to individual user interfaces are likely to become quickly outdated. Supporting interface developments may also result in unintended endorsements of specific commercial vendors. -Encourage Interoperability: SCE should seek to participate in projects that help to close the gap between engine capabilities and the end-user (customer) experience. A great way to do this, without favoring any particular commercial developer, is to invest in projects that support interoperability: the ability to work across multiple tools with minimal effort from the end user. Standardizing input and output files formats and streamlining incentive program requirements would encourage design teams to further incorporate BEM into their design processes. -Educate: SCE provides free industry-leading education and training on BEM tools at their Irwindale and Tulare Energy Education Centers. As has been historically the case, these courses should evolve to reflect the latest needs of SCE customers. Web-based resources and forums for crowd-sourced reviews (such as IBPSA-USA’s BEST Directory) are also examples of ways education can support customer experience with BEM tools. Additionally, this report organizes 40 actionable recommendations based on specific needs from SCE’s portfolio of programs (Table 1). SCE stakeholders can gauge and prioritize these recommendations to develop new BEM projects that are in alignment with the findings of this roadmap.