Polish researchers independently validated Energy3D with Building Energy Simulation Test (BESTEST)

Fig. 1: BESTEST600 test case

Fig. 2: Comparison of Energy3D results with those of other simulation tools

The Building Energy Simulation Test (BESTEST) is a test developed by the International Energy Agency for evaluating various building energy simulation tools, such as EnergyPlus, BLAST, DOE2, COMFIE, ESP-r, SERIRES, S3PAS, TASE, HOT2000, and TRNSYS. The methodology is based on a combination of empirical validation, analytical verification, and comparative analysis techniques. A method was developed to systematically test whole building energy simulation programs. Geometrically simple cases, such as cases BESTEST600 to 650, are used to test the ability of a subject program to model effects such as thermal mass, direct solar gain windows, shading devices, infiltration, internal heat gain, sunspaces, earth coupling, and setback thermostat control. The BESTEST procedure has been used by most building simulation software developers as part of their standard quality control program. More information about BESTEST can be found at the U.S. Department of Energy's website.

Prof. Dr. Robert Gajewski, Head of Division of Computing in Civil Engineering, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology, and his student Paweł Pieniążek recently used BESTEST600-630 test case (Figure 1) to evaluate the quality of Energy3D's predictions of heating and cooling costs of buildings. By comparing Energy3D's results with those from major building energy simulation tools (Figure 2), they concluded that, "[Energy3D] proved to be an excellent tool for qualitative and quantitative analysis of buildings. Such a program can be an excellent part of a computer supported design environment which takes into account also energy considerations."

Their paper was published here.