Building Energy Surrogate Models with EnergyPlusNew

Background

Building energy simulation (EnergyPlus, whole-building hourly heat balance) is the reference method for retrofit assessment and code compliance. But each design evaluation costs seconds to minutes - painful for parametric studies across thousands of building variants and climate zones.

Approach

• Run batched EnergyPlus simulations over parameterized models (envelope, HVAC setpoints, schedules)
• Train regression surrogates (MLP, gradient boosting, or sequence models) on simulation outputs
• Deploy surrogates for design exploration, fault detection, and control tuning

Reported use

• Orders-of-magnitude evaluation speedups for annual energy prediction, with accuracy targets set per use case
• Common pattern in model-predictive-control research for HVAC optimization

Use cases

• Retrofit package screening across building portfolios
• Climate-zone robustness studies for design guidelines
• Real-time control layers that need fast forward prediction

Resources

• EnergyPlus documentation, input/output reference, example files
• NREL and DOE publications on surrogate modeling for building energy