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.

  1. 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.

  2. Extract it to a folder that you know.

  3. 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. Either the official distribution from python.org or the Anaconda distribution (recommended).

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 Anaconda. Make sure you configure your virtual environment to use Python 3.8 or greater. Then activate your environment.

Install the library by doing the following:

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

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.

  1. Install the AWS CLI version 2

  2. Configure the AWS CLI. (Don’t type the $ in the example.)

  3. You may need to change the Athena Engine version for your query workgroup to v2 or v3.

Eagle

BuildStock Batch is preinstalled on Eagle. To use it, ssh into Eagle, activate the appropriate conda environment:

module load conda
source activate /shared-projects/buildstock/envs/buildstock-X.X

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

ls /shared-projects/buildstock/envs

AWS User Configuration

To use the automatic upload of processed results to AWS Athena, you’ll need to configure your user account with your AWS credentials. This setup only needs to be done once.

First, ssh into Eagle, then issue the following commands

module load conda
source activate /shared-projects/buildstock/envs/awscli
aws configure

Follow the on screen instructions to enter your AWS credentials. When you are done:

source deactivate

Developer installation

For those doing development work on BuildStock Batch (not most users), a new conda environment that includes buildstock batch is created with the bash script create_eagle_env.sh in the git repo that will need to be cloned onto Eagle. The script is called as follows:

bash create_eagle_env.sh envname

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

If you pass the -d flag to that script, it will install the buildstock-batch 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_eagle_env.sh -d -e /projects/enduse/envs mydevenv

Amazon Web Services (Beta)

Warning

The AWS version of buildstockbatch is currently broken. A remedy is in progress. Thanks for your patience.

The installation instructions are the same as the Local installation. You will need to use an AWS account with appropriate permissions. The first time you run buildstock_aws it may take several minutes, especially over a slower internet connection as it is downloading and building a docker image.