Victoria University of Wellington's Centre for Building Performance Research (CBPR) produced templates of commercial buildings for New Zealand applications. The aim of the templates is to speed up modelling by incorporating standardised HVAC (heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and cooling), occupancy and lighting schedules. This enables designers to concentrate more on the design parameters of the building rather than creating assumed conditions under which the designs will be modelled.
You can download the templates here.
About the templates
Five main building form templates were chosen to best represent the range of types of commercial buildings in New Zealand. These were derived from the built form classifications proposed by Steadman et al. (2000). These templates were scaled up to the specified floor size in Google SketchUp. Additional schedules and other data were sourced from the EnergyPlus simulation benchmark buildings (Torcellini et al., 2008).
Purpose of the templates
The downloadable templates provide reliable benchmark models for people wishing to simulate the energy performance of non-residential buildings. These benchmark models are based on real building information collected during the BEES research project. The templates were originally developed to simulate the performance of existing buildings.
Generic built forms were developed to standardise this modelling process and thus make it quick and consistent. This was basically a quality assurance measure, designed to ensure accurate representation of the performance of real buildings. As benchmarks, the templates allow the simulation of building performance given typical equipment loads and usage schedules in real commercial buildings derived from the BEES data. They allow the user to set a baseline for assessing improvements to the lighting, thermal and energy environments. The other potential use for the templates is as a consistent foundation for any new building simulation model.
Construction types
OpenStudio allows users to select inbuilt template values for construction types, including glazing. These are then allocated to the building elements, along with the percentage of glazing for each façade.
Standard output settings
EnergyPlus simulates the thermal, lighting, water and energy performance of any building. With appropriate local information on energy tariffs and local generation, it can be configured to convert this data into cost and emissions reports. The BEES templates are set up to output standard reports on total monthly energy use of the facility and hourly zone mean air temperatures.
With simple changes (discussed in a step-by-step process), the output reports can be adjusted to include energy end uses, such as lighting, equipment, heating and cooling. Similarly, reports can be produced related to the external environmental conditions, thermal and glare comfort and full cost analysis (utility and construction related).