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Life Cycle Costs Escalation for Electricity

This will likely end up as an issue on either OpenStudio or EnergyPlus github. I just don't know which, so I'm asking here.

When I setup LifeCycleCosts objects in OpenStudio, I noticed that the LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation isn't taken into account for my electricity usage.

What OpenStudio Loads into my model is the LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation from the E+ datasets. For eg:

LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation,
  U.S. Avg  Residential-Electricity,      !- Name
  Electricity,                            !- Resource
  2011,                                   !- Escalation Start Year
  January,                                !- Escalation Start Month
  0.9894,                                 !- Year Escalation 1
  0.9950,                                 !- Year Escalation 2
  [...]

LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation,
  U.S. Avg  Residential-Natural gas,      !- Name
  NaturalGas,                             !- Resource
  2011,                                   !- Escalation Start Year
  January,                                !- Escalation Start Month
  0.9733,                                 !- Year Escalation 1
  0.9666,                                 !- Year Escalation 2
  [...]

When I look at the eplusout.html, table "Present Value for Recurring, Nonrecurring and Energy Costs (Before Tax)", for NaturalGas, I see it's taking them into account as I can use the discount rate I entered and the values for the escalation rate for NaturalGas and recreate the (net) Present Value in the table.

For electricity, it's ignoring the escalation rates. I also see that it's reported as "ElectricityPurchased", might be part of the problem.

Julien Marrec's avatar
29.7k
Julien Marrec
asked 2017-06-27 09:26:53 -0500
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Julien, can you send me your IDF file and I will try to diagnose it the issue. BTW, it is probably a EnergyPlus issue.

JasonGlazer's avatar JasonGlazer (2017-07-07 14:58:23 -0500) edit

Done, I sent it to you via email.

Julien Marrec's avatar Julien Marrec (2017-07-10 03:52:38 -0500) edit
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1 Answer

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In order for the LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation to work properly the Resource field must match the resource used in Output Meter Name of the UtilityCost:Tariff. For the file provided by Julien Marrec, the LifeCycleCost:UsePriceEscalation used a Resource of Electricity but the UtilityCost:Tariff used a Output Meter Name of ElectricityPurchased:Facility.

This points out a few problems to be resolved as part of EnergyPlus issue #6144 that a warning should be issued if they do not match and that the LCCusePriceEscalationDataSetXXXX.idf dataset files that come with EnergyPlus should reference ElectricityPurchased instead of just Electricity as the Resource.

JasonGlazer's avatar
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JasonGlazer
answered 2017-07-12 06:33:30 -0500
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