Python - using OpenStudio Bindings, EnergyPlus API, and matplotlib

Written circa 2021-01-05.

Purpose

This notebook aims to demonstrate the use of:

• The OpenStudio Python Bindings.

  • This is used to efficiently create and customize a model to be simulated

  • Note: Until a version > 3.1.0 (eg 3.1.1 or 3.2.0) is out on pypi, I recommend using the testpypi version where I made usability adjustments. You can do pip install -i https://test.pypi.org/simple/ openstudio for that one.

• The EnergyPlus Python API, and how to use callbacks to retrieve data

• Updating a live matplotlib plot during E+ simulation via the EnergyPlus Python API callback.

Several options and examples are shown below. I strongly recommend you encapsulate your data inside a class (see section 3.4) instead of relying on python global data, but it does bring a sligthly higher complexity level so for simple stuff you can ommit that and use 3.1 to 3.3 instead (which are also used as an entry point to demonstrate the API)

Resources:

• OpenStudio SDK documentation: https://openstudio-sdk-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html
• EnergyPlus Python API documentation: https://energyplus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api.html

Demo

This is free software (MIT License) contributed by EffiBEM.

Leveraging software, EffiBEM specializes in providing new ways to streamline your workflows and create new tools that work with limited inputs for your specific applications. We also offer support and training services on BEM simulation engines (OpenStudio and EnergyPlus).