WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced the release of the latest version of its building energy modeling software, EnergyPlus, which calculates the energy required to heat, cool, ventilate, and light a building. According to DOE, EnergyPlus is used to design more efficient buildings, to investigate new building and system designs, and to help develop energy codes and standards. Advanced physics calculations within EnergyPlus allow it to model a wide range of residential and commercial buildings and HVAC system types, including passive building designs and low-energy systems.

DOE said EnergyPlus v7.0 features a number of enhancements. New features include: significant speed increases for simulations; new input data sets for HVAC equipment performance for rooftop packaged air conditioners and heat pumps; expanded library of refrigerant data to include R-407a and superheated CO2 properties; new input data set for exhaust-fired chiller heater model; steam is now a “built-in” fluid property; and more.

EnergyPlus v7.0 is available free of charge for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. Source code licenses are also available. For a list of all the new features and enhancements, click here.