Conference Announcement

Modeling for a Sustainable Future

ASHRAE seeks to advance the industry's ability to more accurately model and simulate a building's energy use.

This conference will guide the building design professional about what works and what really doesn't work when using currently available modeling tools to design and analyze new and existing buildings and their energy using systems. The conference will provide the design professional with "workarounds" that may be applied to improve the results of their modeling results when their modeling tool of choice may not be capable of modeling some of the more unique or hybrid buildings or energy using systems being used in high performance buildings today.

With a focus on case studies and "real world" examples, the conference will allow an exchange of ideas among design professionals and software developers to facilitate understanding of current modeling tools available and their capabilities and limitations and identify the need for new tools and improvements to existing modeling and simulation tools. The conference will guide the design professional toward developing in-house modeling checklists and quality control procedures to improve their competence and confidence in making decisions and recommendations based on modeling in their day-to-day practices.

Building on the successful Energy Modeling Conference format in April 2011, this conference will begin with an interactive session with modeling software developers presenting common modeling scenarios on how their specific software can model a scenario, whether there are any limitations and what might be the best work around and exceptional modeling practices to obtain acceptable results when the tool cannot model the scenario "out-of-the-box".

Proposed Conference Content

The Steering Committee has sought presentations on case studies and actual projects and how they were analyzed and designed using single and multiple modeling tools as well as integrated and interoperable modeling tools to best optimize the building and its energy-using systems, including:

• HVAC load analysis
• Energy modeling
• Side-by-side software provider presentations on their ability to address specific modeling system types and applications and energy simulation programs
• Code and Standards Compliance Issues (Standard 90.1, Standard 62, Standard 189.1)
• Energy Star, LEED and other high performance building guidelines' impacts on models
• Innovative system modeling: chilled beams, WSHPs, renewables, VRF, cogeneration, labyrinths, ECM motors
• Integration of analytic modeling tools with BIM
• Exceptional modeling techniques for when tools just do not work
• Simplified and rapid modeling techniques that may be applied for early analysis.
• Integration of daylighting, CFD and other exceptional modeling techniques and results into HVAC simulations
• Life cycle cost analysis

The conference's target facilities include both existing and new construction (except single family residential buildings).

Presentation Schedule:
Notification of abstract decisions: April 2, 2012
Accepted speaker forms due: May 1, 2012
Presentations due: September 1, 2012
Conference: October 2012

Conference Program Chair
Dennis Knight
Email: dknight@wholebuildingsystems.com

Staff Support
For information on the technical program, special events, special sessions and general conference inquiries
Email: meetings@ashrae.org

Technical Support
For technical problems or for help in submitting an abstract online, email Tech Support