The Building Energy Simulation Test (BESTEST) is a project developed by the International Energy Agency for practical implementation procedure and data for an overall IEA validation methodology which has been under development by NREL since 1981.
The project methodology is based on a combination of empirical validation, analytical verification and comparative analysis techniques. A method was developed to systematically test whole building energy simulation programs and analyze the sources of predictive disagreement. State of the art software was examined such as BLAST, DOE2, COMFIE, ESP-r, SERIRES, S3PAS, TASE, HOT2000, and TRNSYS. In order to conduct a uniform set of unambiguous test cases and test tried to describe the cases in a fashion that allows many different building simulation programs to be tested. Output values for cases, such as annual loads, annual temperatures, annual peak loads, and some hourly data are compared in relation with the diagnostic logic to determine the algorithm responsible for predictive differences. The more realistic cases and geometrically simple cases, such as cases BESTEST600 to 650, test ability of the programs to model effects such as thermal mass, direct solar gain windows, shading devices, infiltration, internal heat gain, sunspaces, earth coupling, and setback thermostat control.
This approach succeeded to be a reference evaluation methodology for other simple or complex building energy simulation programs. The BESTEST procedure has been used by most building simulation software developers as part of their standard quality control program. The BESTEST method has shown that when a program shows major disagreement with the reference programs, the primary cause is usually a bug, faulty algorithm, or documentation problem.
Famous quotes containing the words building, energy, simulation and/or test:
“And of the other things death is a new office building filled with modern furniture,
A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Reckoned physiologically, everything ugly weakens and afflicts man. It recalls decay, danger, impotence; he actually suffers a loss of energy in its presence. The effect of the ugly can be measured with a dynamometer. Whenever man feels in any way depressed, he senses the proximity of something “ugly.” His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with the ugly, they increase with the beautiful.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey’s fits and starts, rehearses life’s own fragmentation. More even than the novel, it embraces the contingency of things.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers,—it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)