Quick Start Guide

If you’re new to Scout, this is the right place to get started. Steps for running a Scout analysis from start to finish are listed below; additional guidance on certain steps can be found in linked tutorials.

1. Setup Scout and prerequisites

Download the latest version of Scout and follow the Installation Guide to configure the programs required for Scout to run.

Note

If you’d like to execute the full set of standard Scout measures (ECMs) that are included with the installation in the folder ./ecm_definitions, download the file Latest_BM_Shapes.zip here and unzip/add its contents to the folder ./ecm_definitions/energyplus_data/savings_shapes.

2. Create new ECM definition(s) (optional)

Visit the Scout web interface’s ECM Summaries Page. Register and/or sign in to your Scout account using the “Register” or “Sign In” button at the top right of the page. Once signed in, click the “Add ECM” dropdown at the top right of the page and select the “Write New ECM” option. Follow the steps for generating a new ECM definition; the ECM definition file will be downloaded to your computer. Move the downloaded ECM to the ./ecm_definitions folder (see Web Interface Tutorial 2: Creating and editing ECMs for additional guidance).

Alternatively, follow Local Execution Tutorial 1: Creating and editing ECMs to develop your own ECM definition(s) using a text editor.

3. Open the command line interface

Open a Terminal window (Mac) [1] or command prompt (Windows) [2] and navigate to the Scout project directory (shown with the example location ./Documents/projects/scout-0.1 – substitute the path to your Scout directory) by entering the following command line argument:

Windows

cd Documents\projects\scout-0.1

Mac

cd Documents/projects/scout-0.1

4. Prepare ECMs for analysis

Enter the following command line argument (see Local Execution Tutorial 3: Preparing ECMs for analysis for additional guidance and execution options):

Windows

py -3 scout/ecm_prep.py

Mac

python3 scout/ecm_prep.py

Note

The standard set of ECM definitions included in ./ecm_definitions requires the EMM region setting to execute. Only new or edited ECM definitions are updated in this step.

Tip

Preparing the full set of standard ECM definitions in ./ecm_definitions will take several minutes. For a quicker test run, consider restricting the contents of this folder to just one or a handful of measures of interest while setting the contents of the file ./ecm_definitions/package_ecms.json to a blank list [].

5. Modify active list of ECMs (optional)

Enter the following command line argument (see Local Execution Tutorial 4: Modifying the active ECMs list for additional guidance):

Windows

py -3 scout/run_setup.py

Mac

python3 scout/run_setup.py

6. Run analysis on active ECMs

Enter the following command line argument (see Local Execution Tutorial 5: Running an analysis for additional guidance and execution options):

Windows

py -3 scout/run.py

Mac

python3 scout/run.py

7. View results plots and data

Open the ./results/plots folder to view local plots of your results and access underlying data in Excel (see Local Execution Tutorial 6: Viewing and understanding outputs for additional guidance). Local plots are organized in folders by adoption scenario and plotted metric of interest (i.e., ./results/plots/(adoption scenario)/(metric of interest)). Raw data for each adoption scenario’s plots are stored in the XLSX files beginning with “Summary_Data.”

Footnotes

[1]

To open Terminal, press ⌘-space on your keyboard, begin typing “terminal” in the search bar that opens, and select Terminal from the list of programs that appear.

[2]

To launch the command prompt, press Win+R on your keyboard, type “cmd” in the search bar that opens, and press Enter.