Random Numbers Generation for Lifecycle-Cost Analysis of Energy Consuming Equipment

Publication Type

Report

Authors

Abstract

Lifecycle Cost Analysis has a key role in the development of energy efficiency standards for appliances, lighting, and other equipment. The analysis includes Monte Carlo simulations to estimate – from a sample of thousands of consumers with diverse profiles – the net-present value of all, lifetime costs associated with a piece of equipment to provide a certain amount of energy service. This report introduces a set of pseudo-random number generation functions developed in MS Excel VBA to support those simulations. It further compares the effectiveness of these functions to the effectiveness of similar ones available in a broadly used commercial software program. The effectiveness of the functions is evaluated from 17 sets of 1000 samples, each sample comprised of 10,000 pseudo-random numbers drawn from custom uniform, normal, triangular, Weibull and categorical distributions. All samples pass three relevant tests of pseudo-randomness, namely long period, uniformity and independence. The samples also prove to be statistically equivalent to their corresponding peers generated by the commercial software program.

Year of Publication

2015

Organization

Research Areas

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