The Java EnergyPlus Simulation Server, or JESS, is a software system supports running simulations remotely on a high-performance computer grid. JESS Online is the service we provide at ENSIMS, using our own in-house cluster and the public cloud service.

The history

The development of JESS started in 2011. During the early years, it was deployed on the computer cluster at De Montfort University, which allowed us to carry out extensive testing, private trials and public trials. In total over 200 user accounts have been created and over 150,000 computing hours consumed during the trials. In summer 2014 we started to build our own high-performance cluster for bringing JESS Online to the public. It has been evolving ever since and is now one of the most reliable and mature services available for EnergyPlus users.

How does it work?

The principle of JESS Online is very simple: you put the simulation input files in a folder; the JESS Client (a small software package) sends the contents of the folder to the JESS server over internet; after the simulation is done, the results will be collected by the JESS Client and put into your local folder. The whole process is very similar to running simulations locally and can be made transparent to the calling building simulation tool. However, you can now fire off 20 or 100 simulations at once without worry of burning out your laptop.

What does JESS support?

Currently, JESS supports EnergyPlus (all versions from 7.0), Radiance (rtrace and rpict), and Daysim simulations. EnergyPllus is the simulation engine for many building simulation tools. If you are using or developing a tool that uses EnergyPlus, we will be happy to help you get it connected with JESS. We are also working to support more simulation engines in the future.