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A couple comments on those of others ... fuel for the fire, or
stir up the hornets
Quote: "First let me state that from all
available evidence, the whole DOE (and here DOE is the name of the program -
what a strange choice for program name, BTW) effort is one of the most
successful undertakings in a brief history of computer program development and
represent well spent government dollars by any standard."
Comment: First, all the contributors to DOE-2 thank you for your kind
words.
The name was chosen, against developers advice, by USDOE, shortly after
the
creation of the Department, to replace the programs existing name;
previously
the program was named CalERDA for the Calif. and ERDA (one org.
moved
into the new DOE) who supplied the early funds. DOE-1, DOE-2,
DOE-2.0A,
DOE-2.1A, DOE-2.1B and DOE-2.1C (1977-1986) were mostly paid for by
DOE with small contributions from others. DOE-2.1D (~1988) had
smallish
percentage of private contribution. DOE-2.1E (~1994) was about half
private
contribution (mostly my company) and DOE-2.2 (current) is mostly
private
contribution (mostly my company). DOE-2 would not have come into
existence
without the State and Federal government very large investment;
surprisingly large
compared to similar private projects of the time; comparing public vs.
private
contributions must be done using project output not $ input.
DOE-X only "took off" after private firms adopted and invested heavily:
first
just PC ports like the defunct SI, Inc turned into Acrosoft, and ADM; then
our
PC ports with many new HVAC/Economics/EndUseReporting 2.1E versions;
then interfaces Comply24, VisualDOE, EZ-DOE, etc. This ivestment only
happens
if firms can make $ from such efforts. Such return on investment is
not possible
unless licensing gives those investing the time and $ the ability to
benefit from their
investment.
So, we owe DOE and CA/CEC thanks for making it possible that DOE-x exists,
but
owe the thanks to the private sector companies that took the somewhat
deflated
ball, added much air (hot at times) and ran with it.
Quote: "It seems to me that there is a quite a
bit of confusion about PowerDOE, which is in my opinion, very good
program. PowerDOE is nothing more than good pre and post processor, which
can have DOE 2.2 or EnergyPlus as underlying engine."
Comment: Again, the PowerDOE development team thanks you for
the kind words.
PowerDOE interface code was developed by my company with $
only from EPRI
and our own investment (85% vs. 15%). LBNL participated, with
many other
organizations, in design meetings for the PowerDOE user
interface. The PowerDOE
interface is not just a "pre and post processor" for DOE-2; it
is a full interactive
implementation of DOE-2's BDL processor (which is somewhat of
a table driven
table generator whose internal design is only applicable to
just DOE-X, but any
application that requires extensive input organized into
object tables.) Editing
PowerDOE data screens is editing BDL memory in real time
including the dynamic
recalculation of parameter defaults (like a very large
spreadsheet with a formula in
every cell; thus the slow down - geometric- as problems get
very large.) The
PowerDOE name was suggested by LBNL as they did not like our
original winDOE
name; PowerDOE name was okayed by DOE, then accepted and
trademarked by
EPRI (oops! - an poor choice of move motivated by political
infighting amoungst the
EPRI/DOE/LBNL/JJH team). I have licensed the use of the
name and EPRI owned
interface code from EPRI for further development and
commercial distribution.
Quote: "EnergyPlus is an open source program, and alpha version
is just being released. For measly $100 (I think) anybody can get license
agreement and build commercial strength pre and post-processor to
it. "
Comment: EnergyPlus is NOT open
source; but it should be, in my opinion, using UC's
(LBNL is managed by UC for DOE)
own BSD (Unix) type license since it is developed
(almost?) entirely using public
funds. Why a fee; why not freeware like our basic
DOE-2
versions? No published
distribution licenses yet; and if these become available and have
a
per copy royalty, there can be
no freeware products that are EnergyPlus based unless LBNL
does them - in which case why
would any private sector firm invest the time and $ to
compete
against the government
funds. We could adapt both the PowerDOE and eQUEST
(freeware)
interfaces to EnergyPlus in a
straight forward manner fairly quickly; we cannot do this
without
open source licensing and a
working, supported (commercially viable) complete product -
a
couple years away at best. I'm
sure Eley can do the same with the VisualDOE interface and
EnergySoft with EnergyPro and
so on; DOE has no business funding work that so many
private firms are already doing
and can do better; a similar argument can be made for
DOE's getting out of the engine
business where the result is in "product" form rather
than
NMF model library or "component
toolkit" form. The private sector can take the correct
next commercial product steps,
better, cheaper and faster (and also provide the required
product marketing and
support.)
Quote:
"Sorry for the rant, but I'm also getting tired the people who think they
can
purchase Power or Visual DOE and be a DOE2 expert in a week with no prior experience -- simulation, HVAC design or otherwise." Comment: we have many eQUEST users after quick, accurate,
"first order" answers
doing just what you say is not possible. But I agree
that "specialists" will always be needed
to perform accurate, indepth analysis. eQUEST 2.0 will
be released within a couple weeks
(also freeware - and eQUEST 1.2 will be posted Friday); 2.0 will have a
large fraction of
PowerDOE-like capabilities (2D/3D displays, HVAC diagrams, full DOE-2
details dialogs
and data editing, table/graphic report pages) and retains improved versions
of the building
creation and EEM wizards. We want to see thousands doing analysis not
hundreds.
Quote: "PowerDoe hasn't been very useful for
us. Our buildings tend to be fairly
large with alot of detail, so it is easy to bring PowerDoe to a crawl on both the P-pro 200 and PIII 300 machines we have." Comment: As I mentioned above, PowerDOE is like a
very large spreadsheet with thousands
of formula; changing some items in a large building
model causes tens of thousand of parameters
to be recalculated; PowerDOE 1 was developed as a 16-bit application - the
memory sharing
between the 16-bit interface code and 32-bit interactive BDL suffers from
very large windows
ALIAS-style memory sharing between processes overhead and the slowness of
32-bit numeric
calculation in a 16-bit interface environment. eQUEST is fully a
32-bit implementation and thus
is much faster; eQUEST 2.0 has full BDL details editing. Thus, we
hope to greatly reduce your
frustrations in the near future.
Quote: "One more comment and question - the DOE is spending our
money to create new code and have arguably abandoned the multi-million dollar
investment in previous DOE2.x developent. Is this the best use of taxpayer
money?"
Comment: There is an important role, in my view, for taxpayer $ in this field; it is a good way to get the basic models, algorithms, and lab/field
detailed data collection and model validation
started (and sometimes the only source for this funding for some types of
components.) It is
a terrible way to get "products" done; DOE-2 became most successful because
private
companies (and utilities) decided to invest heavily in taking the basic
code to the next level
so as to be useful and useable by a wide range of "consumers" of the
technology (designers,
researchers, code officials, etc.) This required heavy investment in
both the "raw" DOE-2
engine (mostly work done by my company) as well as many interfaces
(GabelDodd
EnergySoft's EnergyPro, Eley Associates VisualDOE, Elite's EasyDOE, Item
Systems
DOEPlus, EPRI/JJH's PowerDOE, JJH's eQUEST, DOE/PNL ComCheck-Plus, and
many
others under development or private offering in specialized markets.)
Quote: "Perhaps my perceptions of success have been unduly tainted by the
seemingly endless wait for PowerDOE and 2.2"
Comment: Lots could be said here, but not worth the
space. In summary, others decided to
announce the software development and schedule before the basic components
were designed
and cost estimated or funds wre available to do the work. My company
advised against such
announcements and never made any prior to 1997 first versions being
available. No matter,
it is all now out there for you to use; more popwerful but probably new
frustrations and
even longer "wish lists."
---
Jeff Hirsch James J. Hirsch & Associates Building Performance Analysis Software & Consulting 12185 Presilla Road Camarillo, CA 93012-9243 USA phone: (805) 553-9000 fax: (805) 532-2401 email: Jeff.Hirsch@xxxxxxxx web: http://DOE2.com =====================================================You received this e-mail because you are subscribed to the BLDG-SIM@xxxxxxxx mailing list. To unsubscribe from this mailing list send a blank message to BLDG-SIM-UNSUBSCRIBE@xxxxxxxx |