IC3 Resnet Accreditation User's Guide

Abstract

This document is intended to provide the users from the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) with information on the supporting materials for the RESNET Accreditation of International Code Compliance Calculator (IC3) v3.3 software as an IECC Performance Path Calculation Tool. The CD that accompanies this document contains five files/folders including the electronic copy of the application and the supporting materials for the RESNET accreditation of IC3. The IC3 software is a web-based tool which was developed by the Energy Systems Laboratory (ESL) to demonstrate compliance of single-family residences with the Texas Building Energy Performance Standards (TBEPS). The Desktop DOE-2 Processor (DDP) spreadsheet is the ESL’s internal desktop version that utilizes the same DOE-2 simulation as the web-based IC3. It also provides the batch entry for IC3, which allows the creating and modifying of the proposed design and standard reference design to be done manually or automatically. The simulation inputs are passed to the DOE-2 input file for the energy simulation of the proposed and standard reference designs. Finally, the DDP reports the simulation results back to the DDP spreadsheet. The user-interface of IC3 was designed to ensure simple and quick input through reduced user input fields, and simple output by reporting the code-compliance as percent above or below code only for the locations in Texas. The DDP spreadsheet has the flexibility to calculate compliance with other codes by auto-generating the corresponding standard reference designs, incorporate additional weather locations, report the simulation results in a desired manner, as well as modify several simulation inputs, which are not available in the user interface of IC3. Since the test runs for RESNET accreditation cannot be performed using the user interface of web-based IC3, a special version of DDP spreadsheet (i.e., RESNET_DDP_IC3.xls) was developed for RESNET accreditation. This spreadsheet can be uploaded to the ESL’s web server for processing, and downloaded after the processing is complete, to view the simulation results. In this manual, Section 1 presents a brief overview of the IC3. Section 2 includes the details of the specially created DDP spreadsheet (RESNET_DDP_IC3.xls) for RESNET accreditation, and Section 3 includes the instructions for replicating the test runs using this spreadsheet. Section 4 presents other helpful information, including contact information and account sign up. At last, Appendix A and B present the results of five tests required for the RESNET accreditation and the contents of the accompanying CD, respectively.