Synchronizing Utility Data with Historical Weather Data

If you have done any real world building energy simulation before, you know that collecting utility data and synchronizing with historical weather data is a very labor intensive process. The Green Button feature in GBS is designed to streamline and simplify this process. The Green Button feature uses the VSTO MS Excel base interface to facilitate learning so that you can use this feature quickly. Use the following troubleshooting guide to manage what used to be a complicated process.

Keep in mind that GBS only accepts the utility data in a standard XML format. You can use the MS Excel interface to check the validation of data before importing. You would be notified with a message box with the error information for a mal-formed XML file. Here are the details of the limitations and the user can check and fix the XML file with the tool XML Notepad.

1. The Green Button utility file can only contain electricity or fuel usage data. The element feed/entry/content/UsagePoint/ServiceCategory/kind indicates the kind of the utility data, 0 for electricity and 1 for gas.

   

2. The utility data in Green Button xml file needs to be a full year data organized on a monthly base. The time scope should exactly be 12 blocks representing 12 months respectively. All the readings in the block would be aggregated as the monthly usage value and cost.

   

3. The start of each block should be the first day of that month. Though the first month is not required to be January, the first reading of each block should be the first day of the month. The value if represented by a "start" as the number of second from January 1st, 1970.

   

4. The time period of each block or reading should not overlap with any other, and there should not be any gap between two adjacent readings or blocks. The time period is represented with the "start" mentioned above and the "duration" in second. The end of a time period which can be calculated by adding the duration to the start should be exactly the same as the start of the next block or reading.

   

5. The value and cost in the reading should not be negative.

   

6. The cost should be in US dollar. The element feed/entry/content /ReadingType/currency contains the currency code for the cost. The only valid currency code, if specified, should be 840, which represents US dollar.

   

7. The unit of the usage value is indicated by a code in the element feed/entry/content /ReadingType/uom.The supported codes are as follows:

   • Electricity: 72(WattHour)

   • Gas: 132(BTU), 31(Joule), 169(Therm)