Input dataflow management for the simulation of community energy use

Existing detailed simulation methods generally address the energy use of individual buildings, through the specification of its fabric, ventilation, fuelled services and occupancy patterns. Current concerns in developing sustainable built environments however often focus on groups or communities of buildings. In the Virtual Village (VIRVIL) project, means of extending detailed simulation methods to this level have been explored, in order to produce a detailed, dynamic simulation of the energy use of a community. That community must contain (simulations of) a varied mix of old and new housing, commercial and industrial properties, and include renewable energy generation systems. The building simulation tool used for this project is EnergyPlus. The existing capability of EnergyPlus is used to simulate individual buildings in parallel, with diversity as found in reality, communicating through a database. Key element of this procedure is the concept of a meta-description file. The development and the implementations of this concept are discussed in this paper.