30 Years Later, Modeling Process Remains the Same

摘要

This article was written in 1983 when energy modeling was rarely a part of the architectural and engineering design process. Pursued by only a few die-hard energy conservation advocates, available only through large commercial time-sharing networks, and accessible only through cryptic text input (Building Description Language, [BDL] or even 80 column card images), these tools were far outside the practice mainstream. National laboratories, such as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, were hard at work developing DOE-2 and BLAST. The private programs listed in the article competed for the attention of a handful of practitioners. Significant energy modeling exercises had been pursued in support of the abandoned Building Energy Performance Standards, and in the design of ground-breaking buildings such as the TVA Chattanooga office building, but no guidelines existed for the role of energy modeling at various stages of the design and construction process. This article was one of the first attempts to characterize those roles and to define specific procedures by which the relevancy of energy modeling to the design process could be maximized.