Utility Rates: wrap "UtilityCost:*" objects in Model API

[asparke2]

• UtilityCost:Charge:Block
• UtilityCost:Charge:Simple
• UtilityCost:Qualify
• UtilityCost:Ratchet
• UtilityCost:Tariff
• UtilityCost:Variable

Much less needed:

• UtilityCost:Computation

[macumber]

Incorporate OpenEI rates in utility tab. Also provide instructions and code snippet for IDF rates substitution.

[aaron-boranian]

Migrated from UserVoice

[jmarrec]

Retitled to include information based on #3172

[jmarrec]

These objects are quite unusual, and I'm not 100% sure what's the best design. There are two issues I found so far:

• The Value or Variable Name fields are either alpha or numerical.

  • In most cases, this is a case where you either put a numeric value or a UtilityCost:Variable which represents 12 monthly values. In that case I suppose we could always internally use a UtilityCost:Variable, but provide a setXXX(double) overload in addition to setXXX(const UtilityCostVariable&) that would internally set a UtilityCost:Variable with 12 equal values.
  • But I'm not certain there aren't other cases

• The Variable Name fields (eg: Source Variable in UtilityCost:Block) can take multiple potential values:

  • One of the internally defined names, such as TotalEnergy
  • One of the other objects, such as a UtilityCost:Ratchet's name, or even another UtilityCost:Block's name