Goal Is to Reduce Energy Consumption and Emissions;
Increase Occupant Comfort, Health, and Safety; and Lower Operating Costs

EXTON, Pa. – During a recent seminar at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for the infrastructure that sustains our world, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) made it clear that robust energy simulation tools are the key to creating high performance buildings that:

•More closely match their predicted performance;
•Reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions;
•Increase occupant comfort, health, and safety;
•Help provide building owners with real returns, including lower operating costs.
Bentley’s Hevacomp Simulator V8i software takes full advantage of the U.S. DOE’s industry-standard EnergyPlus simulation engine to provide highly accurate building energy analysis and design.

At the seminar, Drury Crawley, Ph.D., technology development manager, U.S. DOE, said that in the DOE’s energy building research, simulation has proven critical for designing and operating buildings to support decision making. At the same time it:

•Helps design teams and owners focus energy-use reduction efforts;
•Permits assessment of predicted performance with established benchmarks or goals;
•Enables teams to evaluate alternatives.

Dr. Crawley added that the integration of the U.S. DOE’s EnergyPlus – a comprehensive building, envelope, HVAC, lighting, water, site, and renewables simulation program – with commercial software is critical to bringing energy simulation into mainstream workflows.

Speaking on behalf of Bentley at the seminar, Noah Eckhouse, Bentley vice president, Building Performance Group, said that too often “green” buildings today don’t perform as intended. This, he explained, results in a greater environmental impact than the design promised, actual energy performance that doesn’t match predicted performance, operating costs that exceed estimates, and/or spaces that are uncomfortable or even unhealthy for the occupants. “There’s a growing concern that many ‘green’ buildings don’t provide anywhere near the savings expected by their designers, with some actually using more energy than the code baseline,” said Eckhouse.

He emphasized that analysis tools based on broad-brushed assumptions can’t provide the required detailed analysis of all relevant factors, including materials, sunlight, climate, systems type, space use, air flow, water usage, CO2 emissions, occupancy, orientation, and many others, that leads to a high performance building. This type of analysis, he explained, can only be accomplished with detailed dynamic simulation tools such as Bentley’s Hevacomp Simulator.

Said Eckhouse, “Designers have to be able to collaborate on all of the data sets they are creating, from conceptual design and system specifications through the detailed design and engineering process, and even into commissioning. This results in buildings that best realize the intentions of the designs. With the help of Bentley’s Hevacomp Simulator, project teams can efficiently and confidently reuse data throughout all of these processes.”

Hevacomp Simulator V8i and Hevacomp Mechanical Designer V8i, along with Bentley Tas Simulator V8i, are part of Bentley’s Energy Performance Series. This robust software for building energy design, analysis, and simulation makes it possible for engineers, architects, and energy assessors to better understand and accurately predict the energy consumption, CO2 emissions, operating costs, and occupant comfort of projects ranging from small and simple to very large and highly complex. Bentley’s Energy Performance Series has been proven in the very demanding U.K. market for the design and construction of high performance “green” buildings and now supports U.S. and Canadian standards.

For additional information about Bentley’s Energy Performance Series, visit www.bentley.com/green.

About Bentley Systems, Incorporated

Bentley is the global leader dedicated to providing architects, engineers, constructors, and owner-operators with comprehensive software solutions for sustaining infrastructure. Founded in 1984, Bentley has more than 2,700 colleagues and offices in more than 45 countries, had 2008 revenues surpassing $500 million, and, since 1995, has invested more than $1 billion in research, development, and acquisitions.

For additional information about Bentley, visit www.bentley.com. To subscribe to an RSS feed of Bentley press releases and news alerts, visit www.bentley.com/rss/news. To view a searchable collection of the year’s top infrastructure projects from the annual Be Awards of Excellence (which this year becomes the Be Inspired Awards), visit www.bentley.com/yearininfrastructure. For information about Be Communities, a professional networking site that enables members of the infrastructure community to connect, communicate, and learn from each other, visit http://communities.bentley.com.

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