TA-23-C050 – Development of an Application Programming Interface for a Building Systems Control Performance Verification Framework

Proper control performance of building systems is key to achieving energy use or saving targets, but at the same time, verifying it against system specifications, control sequences, or building codes requirements is a challenging task. This is true for both actual building systems and simulated systems. An automated data-driven building performance verification framework, in the form of an open-source software, has been developed to help building engineers, modelers, and other practitioners evaluate and verify the performance of building control systems. A key element of the framework is its application programming interface (API). It defines and implements software method calls to standardize and streamline the functionalities and supported control performance verification processes and workflows. This API comprehensively covers different verification use cases and provides utility functions to support common pre-processing and postprocessing needs such as data formatting and simulation model instrumentation. It provides smooth connections between the verification framework and different application scenarios (such as simulation software and data generated from building automation systems, etc.). The API is platform agnostic which means it can be used as a plug-and-play tool for different building energy simulation engines (e.g., EnergyPlus, TRNSYS, Modelica, etc.) and building automation system (BAS) data analytics. This paper introduces the design of the API and provides descriptions of the functionalities and processes that it includes. We also demonstrate the use of the API via the verification of ASHRAE Standard 90.1 requirements about supply air temperature reset control against dataset from building energy simulation.