Installation

BuildStockBatch installations depend on the ResStock or ComStock repository. Either git clone it or download a copy of it or your fork or branch of it with your projects.

Local

This method works for running the simulations locally. BuildStockBatch simulations are computationally intensive. Local use is only recommended for small testing runs.

OpenStudio Installation

Download and install the OpenStudio release that corresponds to your operating system and the release of ResStock or ComStock you are using.

It’s common to need a couple different versions of OpenStudio available for different analyses. This is best achieved by downloading the .tar.gz package for your operating system and unzipping it into a folder rather than installing it. To let BuildStockBatch know which OpenStudio to use, pass the path as the OPENSTUDIO_EXE environment variable.

For example to get OpenStudio 3.5.1 on an Apple Silicon Mac

# Make a directory for your openstudio installations to live in
mkdir ~/openstudio
cd ~/openstudio

# Download the .tar.gz version for your operating system, x86_64 for an Intel mac
# This can also done using a browser from the OpenStudio releases page
curl -O -L https://github.com/NREL/OpenStudio/releases/download/v3.5.1/OpenStudio-3.5.1+22e1db7be5-Darwin-arm64.tar.gz

# Extract it
tar xvzf OpenStudio-3.5.1+22e1db7be5-Darwin-arm64.tar.gz

# Optionally remove the tar file
rm OpenStudio-3.5.1+22e1db7be5-Darwin-arm64.tar.gz

# Set your environment variable to point to the correct version
# This will only work for the current terminal session
# You can also set this in ~/.zshrc to make it work for every terminal session
export OPENSTUDIO_EXE="~/openstudio/OpenStudio-3.5.1+22e1db7be5-Darwin-arm64/bin/openstudio"

For Windows, the process is similar.

Download the Windows OpenStudio release for windows with the .tar.gz extension. For OpenStudio 3.5.1 that is OpenStudio-3.5.1+22e1db7be5-Windows.tar.gz.

Extract it to a folder that you know.

Set the OPENSTUDIO_EXE environment variable to the path. C:\path\to\OpenStudio-3.5.1+22e1db7be5-Windows/bin/openstudio.exe Here’s how to set a Windows environment Variable.

BuildStockBatch Python Library

Install Python 3.8 or greater for your platform.

Get a copy of BuildStockBatch either by downloading the zip file from GitHub or cloning the repository.

Optional, but highly recommended, is to create a new python virtual environment if you’re using python from python.org, or to create a new conda environment if you’re using conda. Make sure you configure your virtual environment to use Python 3.8 or greater. Then activate your environment.

Standard Install

If you are just going to be using buildstockbatch, not working on it, install like so:

cd /path/to/buildstockbatch
python -m pip install -e .

Developer Install

If you are going to be working on and contributing back to buildstockbatch, install as follows after cloning the repository and creating and activating a new python or conda environment.

cd /path/to/buildstockbatch
python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
pre-commit install

AWS User Configuration

To upload BuildStockBatch data to AWS at the end of your run and send results to AWS Athena, you’ll need to configure your user account with your AWS credentials. This setup only needs to be done once.

Install the AWS CLI version 2
Configure the AWS CLI. (Don’t type the $ in the example.)
You may need to change the Athena Engine version for your query workgroup to v2 or v3.

Kestrel

The most common way to run buildstockbatch on Kestrel will be to use a pre-built python environment. This is done as follows:

module load python
source /kfs2/shared-projects/buildstock/envs/buildstock-20XX.XX.X/bin/activate

You can get a list of installed environments by looking in the envs directory

ls /kfs2/shared-projects/buildstock/envs

Developer Installation

For those doing development work on buildstockbatch (not most users), a new python environment that includes buildstockbatch is created with the bash script create_kestrel_env.sh in the git repo that will need to be cloned onto Kestrel. The script is called as follows:

module load git
git clone git@github.com:NREL/buildstockbatch.git
cd buildstockbatch
bash create_kestrel_env.sh env-name

This will create a directory /kfs2/shared-projects/buildstock/envs/env-name that contains the python environment with buildstockbatch installed. This environment can then be used by any user.

If you pass the -d flag to that script, it will install the buildstockbatch package in development mode meaning that any changes you make in your cloned repo will immediately be available to that environment. However, it means that only the user who installed the environment can use it.

If you pass the flag -e /projects/someproject/envs, it will install the environment there instead of the default location. This is useful if you need a specific installation for a particular project.

The -d and -e flags can also be combined if desired

bash create_kestrel_env.sh -d -e /projects/enduse/envs mydevenv

Amazon Web Services (Beta)

Warning

The AWS version of buildstockbatch is in active development. Use at your own risk. It’s provided as-is with no promise of support.

Docker

Install either Docker Desktop of Docker Engine for your platform.

BuildStockBatch Python Library

Install the buildstockbatch python library as described in BuildStockBatch Python Library for the local installation. You’ll need to install with the aws extra as follows.

For a standard installation

cd /path/to/buildstockbatch
python -m pip install -e ".[aws]"

For developer installation

cd /path/to/buildstockbatch
python -m pip install -e ".[dev,aws]"
pre-commit install

AWS User Configuration

Follow the instructions for AWS User Configuration on the local install. Your AWS user account or role needs to have pretty expansive permissions to create IAM roles, VPCs, compute resources, etc.

Todo

Define permission set needed.

For NREL users, the typical resbldg-user or developers role in the nrel-aws-resbldg account is probably insufficient.

Google Cloud Platform

Shared, one-time GCP setup

One-time GCP setup that can be shared by multiple users.

If needed, create a GCP Project. The following steps will occur in that project.
Set up the following resources in your GCP projects. You can either do this manually or using terraform.
- Option 1: Manual setup
  - Create a Google Cloud Storage Bucket (that will store simulation and postprocessing output). Alternatively, each user can create and use their own bucket.
  - Create a repository in Artifact Registry (to store Docker images). This is expected to be in the same region as the storage bucket.
- Option 2: Terraform
  - Follow the Per-user setup instructions below to install BuildStockBatch and the Google Cloud CLI.
  - Install Terraform.
  - From the buildstockbatch/gcp/ directory, run the following with your chosen GCP project and region (e.g. “us-central1”). You can optionally specify the names of the storage bucket and artifact registry repository. See main.tf for more details.
    
    terraform init terraform apply -var="gcp_project=PROJECT" -var="region=REGION"
Optionally, create a shared Service Account. Alternatively, each user can create their own service account, or each user can install the gcloud CLI. The following documentation will assume use of a Service Account.

Per-user setup

One-time setup that each user needs to do on the workstation from which they’ll launch and manage BuildStockBatch runs.

Install Docker. This is needed by the script to manage Docker images (pull, push, etc).
Get BuildStockBatch and set up a Python environment for it using the BuildStockBatch Python Library instructions above. (i.e., create a Python virtual environment, activate the venv, and install buildstockbatch with the command below.)
- Install with the [gcp] option to include GCP-specific dependencies:
cd /path/to/buildstockbatch python -m pip install -e ".[gcp]"
Download/Clone ResStock or ComStock.
Set up GCP authentication.
- Option 1: Create and download a Service Account Key.
  - Add the location of the key file as an environment variable; e.g., export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="~/path/to/service-account-key.json". This can be done at the command line (in which case it will need to be done for every shell session that will run BuildStockBatch, and it will only be in effect for only that session), or added to a shell startup script (in which case it will be available to all shell sessions).
- Option 2: Install the Google Cloud CLI and run the following:
  gcloud config set project PROJECT gcloud auth application-default login gcloud auth login gcloud auth configure-docker REGION-docker.pkg.dev