Energy analysis programs are becoming more advancedand energy standards are becoming more stringent. Thisis driving more design teams to use a performanceapproach to comply with codes or to qualify forincentive and recognition programs. Each softwareapplication produces output in a different format andeach code authority or energy program administratorrequires that information be submitted in a differentformat. Energy modelers spend considerable timetranslating software results in to a suitable format forthe program administrator.
This paper recommends a standard results format toserve as a sort of Rosetta Stone to ease and facilitatecommunication between energy modelers and energyprogram administrators. The standard format iselectronic and defined as an extended markup language(XML) schema. Each software application can writesimple routines to port their results to this format andeach program administrator can write simple parsingroutines to read the standard XML format and transferit to their database format.