Honeybee generation is ready to fly - example work flow!

Hello everyone,

Integrate Photovoltaic and Wind generators into your Honeybee models and make the design and financial analysis of renewable energy systems easier with the Beta release of Honeybee generation!

See an example work flow for designing, simulating and analysing a Photovoltaic system below.

Download a Grasshopper and Rhino example file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/krbszlplj5i40dz/017_HBgeneration%20Rhino%...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lxneuzal3mipd2q/017_HBgeneration.gh?dl=0

See a quick introduction and tutorial videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrx2KnyhaJ5YXo5hpk8Q9q4Vy99O...

1. Select a building to mount a photovoltaic generator on (seen in Rhino in green).

2. Select a surface within that building to mount a photovoltaic generator on (seen in Rhino in green).

3. Create a Honeybee context surface from that surface.

4. Place a photovoltaic generator on that Honeybee context surface by using the Honeybee generation component. Honeybee_Generator_PV and connecting the context surface to it's input _HBSurfaces. Then you can specify both the performance and the financial data of the photovoltaic generator.

5. Create a Honeybee generation system which consists of the photovoltaic generator in 4. By using the component Honeybee_generationsystem and connecting 4 to its input PVHBSurfaces_. Then you can specify the annual maintenance cost of this system.

6. Run the simulation in Energy Plus by connecting 5. to the input HBGenerators_.

7. Read the results of the simulation:

- The electricity produced by the Honeybee generation system in 5.

- The net purchased electricity of the facility (the Honeybee zone) to which the Honeybee generation system is attached to. This is the electricity consumed by the facility less the electricity generated by the Honeybee generation system.

- The financial costs of the Honeybee generation system; capital, maintenance and replacement costs.

8. Calculate the net present cost of the Honeybee generation system in 5 assuming a 25 year lifetime.

9. Visualise the net present cost.

Replies are closed for this discussion.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mostapha Sadeghipour Roudsari on August 28, 2015 at 9:14am

This is very cool Anton! Thanks.

Permalink Reply by Grasshope on August 29, 2015 at 3:53am

Thank you very much, Anton!

According to your workflow, it seems that the Honeybee EP Context Surfaces component shown below is not connected to the "HBContext_" node on the "Honeybee_Run Energy Simulation" component.

So, will the shading effect of this context surface used to define a PV generator be taken care of by this Honeybee EP Context Surfaces component?

Thanks!

Permalink Reply by Anton Szilasi on August 30, 2015 at 10:28am

Hi Grasshope,

Thanks for your message yes the shading will be taken care of. Since you are passing a HB generator system to E+ run file you must connect it to HBgenerators, the context surface that the PV generator is mounted on will automatically be taken into account.

Even if you were to also connect the surface to HBContext_ it wouldn't make a difference.

If there's anything that you think that could be more user friendly or if you have any user requests do let me know.

Love your picture by the way, what is it? A gopher?

Permalink Reply by Grasshope on October 5, 2015 at 9:02am

Hi, Anton, here's the goofy gopher which serves as a potentially cool name for a new GH plugin for sth like data mining etc. ... as in "digging for truth, and bite it!"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgm_K8Uwiv8

Permalink Reply by HitokiKanto on September 10, 2015 at 11:20pm

Thank you , Anton!

Your simulation is so nice!!

So,I　tried your tutorial

But something is wrong with running simulation.

I set up grasshopper like your tutorial, But it does not work like the picture.

I replaced newer Honeybee.

So, could you give me some advice?

Best regard.

Permalink Reply by Anton Szilasi on September 11, 2015 at 3:12am

Hi Hitokikanto,

Sorry to hear about your issue, please attach your GH file and I will fix this for you.

Regards,

Anton

Permalink Reply by Anton Szilasi on September 18, 2015 at 9:08am

Hi HitokkiKano

I've uploaded a new example file that should have no issues try it.

Cheers,

Anton

Permalink Reply by Ludvig Haav on November 17, 2015 at 8:17am

Hi! Thanks for the work! I got it working - nice!

1) How does the calculations differ in these components compared to the PV-components in ladybug? Accuracy of shading, calculation time etc. I'm only interested in the total generated power..

2) Also, when using the DecoupledUllebergDynamic it states in the EP+ documents you should specify the Module Heat Capacity and Module Heat Loss Coefficient. What values have you used as inputs?

3) I could not find your example files on hydra (was i searching sloppy?), and the version you have in this thread do not work with the newly released honeybee without updating script components. Just so u know..

Permalink Reply by Anton Szilasi on November 17, 2015 at 10:59am

Hi Ludvig,

1) The calculations in this component use the E+ PV generator object. Seen here http://bigladdersoftware.com/epx/docs/8-4/input-output-reference/gr.... While the Ladybug components are based on the NREL PV watts calculator.

You can see how the calculations are conducted here: http://bigladdersoftware.com/epx/docs/8-4/engineering-reference/pho...

2) I just realized that I overlooked this when I created the component. Are you going to use this model? Do you need me to integrate it into the component for you?

3) It seems that my example file wasn't uploaded to Hydra I will upload it shortly.

Permalink Reply by Mostapha Sadeghipour Roudsari on November 17, 2015 at 9:14pm

Hi Ludvig and Anton,

Anton, since you have use the same model as Djordje's for the example file I assume it won't be very hard to compare the results? I assume that they should be in close agreement.

Mostapha

Permalink Reply by Ludvig Haav on November 18, 2015 at 1:45am

Hi Anton and Mostapha,

1) Thanks for providing me with the link directly Anton, especially the second one. Its all there. And it would be interesting to conduct a comparative study between the two you are right, Mostapna. Especially preciseness in mutual shading calc is interesting for me.

2) No need to integrate those inputs for my sake right now. I have encountered some issues and am thinking about switching to the ladybug pv-components. My issue is that I cant seem to fill a surface with a pv-module (close to) completely. The PV-module component warns about me using more than 85% and it outputs that im using 97,5%, however the E+ simulation outputs errors that the solar fraction on the surface is 1,975 and it wants to stay in the bound of 0-1.

Permalink Reply by Anton Szilasi on November 18, 2015 at 2:20am

Hi Ludvig,

2) This sounds like a bug that I need to fix can you attach your Grasshopper file here or email it to me - ajszilasi@gmail.com?

I'll work this out for you right away.