A review of web-based building energy analysis applications

Abstract

Building energy simulation software are in no short supply. However, their excessive complexity makes many of them inaccessible to building engineers and architects, for early-stage design decisions. Within this context, many research groups and software developers have been working on tools that 1) are publicly-available, 2) require minimal input data, 3) have short run times, and 4) are suitable for benchmarking purposes and calculating energy or cost-savings. Recent trends show that many of these tools leverage web interfaces to visualize energy data for benchmarking, as well as simulation results for building energy analysis. The current review paper aims to provide detailed information and discussion of twenty-five web-based energy simulation tools, developed in the past few years. Different aspects of the tools, including calculation method, inputs, outputs, and capabilities, are investigated. The strengths and limitations of the tools and their future opportunities for developers and researchers are presented and discussed. Finally, a decision matrix is proposed to help users with the tool selection process, based on four main criteria, i.e. accessibility, capabilities, flexibility, and comprehensiveness.