[clarified] about EnergyPlus output variables in HB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mostapha Sadeghipour Roudsari on July 22, 2015 at 3:02am

Hi Grasshope,

You can just type them and connect it to the component. As you can see in the image the outputs of Honeybee Generate EP Output component is standard EnergyPlus syntax. You just need to follow the similar pattern.

Once the study in done and you read the results back you can find them at otherZoneData output.

Permalink Reply by Grasshope on July 22, 2015 at 6:43am

Thanks, Mostahpa, as usual!

So, a merge component is used to append new output variables.

Permalink Reply by Grasshope on July 22, 2015 at 7:20am

It seems the read EP result component can't process the following output variables, either individually or as a group, appended to the Generate EP Output component, although the results for these variables are in the csv file...

Advices are appreciated!

Output:Variable,*,Zone Total Internal Total Heating Energy,Hourly;
Output:Variable,*,Zone Windows Total Heat Gain Energy,Hourly;
Output:Variable,*,Zone Windows Total Heat Loss Energy,Hourly;  
Output:Meter,DistrictCooling:HVAC,Hourly;
Output:Meter,Electricity:Building,Hourly;
Output:Meter,InteriorLights:Electricity,Hourly;
Output:Meter,InteriorEquipment:Electricity,Hourly; 

Permalink Reply by Abraham Yezioro on July 22, 2015 at 7:46am

Sorry if i'm asking something stupid: Are you defining all the issues you want to plot? Is the building conditioned? Are you asking for those outputs?

The example file can be useful to debug.

-A.

Permalink Reply by Grasshope on July 22, 2015 at 7:57am

Hi, Abraham, I want these particular output variables to come up with the building loads breadown: plug loads, internal gains, and window gains.

the GH file is attached for your reference.

Attachments:

• tut_test_v016.gh, 659 KB

Permalink Reply by Abraham Yezioro on July 22, 2015 at 9:40am

But you are getting those from what you have.

Internal Loads: You are getting people and equipment. Lighting you don't have defined.

Window gains: You get them from the surface evaluation.

Building breakdown: Also you get it from the zone results (you probably need to take into account some COP for heating and cooling results).

I have the feeling i'm still missing something from your questions.

-A.

Permalink Reply by Grasshope on July 22, 2015 at 9:15pm

Hi, Abraham, you got the gist of my question. Thanks!

Permalink Reply by Grasshope on July 22, 2015 at 7:46am

What is in the otherZoneDate is shown below that doesn't retrieve the hourly values from the CSV file

Permalink Reply by Chris Mackey on July 22, 2015 at 5:47pm

Grasshope,

There are several things that have to be clarified here:

1) It seems that you do not need to add any other outputs other than those already in the 'Generate EP Output' component to get the information that you desire.  Just set zoneEnergyUse and zoneGainsAndLosses on the component to true and you get the equipment load (equal to equipment gain), internal lighting load (equal to lighting gain), the people gain, and the total solar gain.  If you also need window heat loss, you can get this on a window-by-window basis by setting the surfaceEnergyAnalysis to true (and, after the simulation, use the 'Surface Data Based on Type Detailed' component to pull out just the window data from the list of al surfaces).

2) There was a bug in the otherZoneData of the 'Read EP Result' component when you set the "normByFlrArea" to True.  Thanks for finding it. I fixed it in the attached GH file so that you can get those specific Zone-level outputs if you want them instead of what I have suggested above.

3) There is currently not a component to read meter outputs mostly because this information would be misleading with the 'Run Energy Simulation' and it use of an ideal air heating/cooling system.  The energy from ideal air systems is not factored in meter outputs and you need to specify a complete, real HVAC system for such thermal outputs to affect things like meter electricity or meter fuel.  Now that development is picking up on the OpenStudio component, which can write these complete HVAC systems, we will eventually have a new result reader that parses the E+ SQL output (including meter outputs).

-Chris

Attachments:

• tut_test_v016_CWM.gh, 653 KB

Permalink Reply by Grasshope on July 22, 2015 at 9:23pm

Hi, Chris, thank you very much for your detailed explanation and the fix of the component!

However, I still got the following issue with the updated "Read EP Result" component:

1. even when the normByFloorArea is set as False, the caption for the zone heating loads visualization still shows "floor normalized heating energy" (see image 1 and 2) below

2. When I try to visualize "zone windows total heat gain energy" normalized by floor area, the caption shows "average" instead, and the color legend is not changed to floor normalized values. (see images 3 & 4 below)

Hope you and bee-bug-lovers can kindly advise!

Thanks!

Attachments:

• tut_test_v017_ZJ.gh, 696 KB

Permalink Reply by Chris Mackey on July 23, 2015 at 11:50pm

Grasshope,

Honeybee by default assumes that you usually want to color zones with energy intensity rather than total energy.  If you want to see energy and not energy intensity, you have to set both the 'normByFlrArea' to false on the 'Read EP Result' component AND the 'normalizeByFloorArea' to false on the 'Color Zones' component.

The reason why the windows energy was showing up as an average was because the component was treating it the same way that it does temperature (since not all outputs of E+ can be meaningfully normalized by the floor area).  I have tried to re-write the function that senses the data type in the color zones component but please understand that this is a difficult function to write since E+ has thousands of outputs and I can't write something to catch them all.

See your case working in the attached file.

-Chris

Attachments:

• tut_test_v017_ZJ_CWM.gh, 700 KB

Permalink Reply by Grasshope on July 25, 2015 at 4:08am

Hi, Chris, thank you very much! Now it works.

So, i connect a boolean toggle to both the normByFloorArea on Read EP Restuls and the normalizeByFloorArea on Color Zones so that the normalization function can be set as on/off for both components at the same time to avoid confusion.

Am I correct?

Correct viz for issue 1:

why one of the zones have different total internal loads is because it has a different floor area (all zones have the same building program, and therefore the same floor area based internal loads definition)

once the total zone loads are normalized by floor area, all the zones have the same value now.

correct viz for issue 2:

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