Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
TRNSYS is considered stronger than EnergyPlus for modeling some types of complex mechanical systems, but for just the building's thermal behavior, I think EnergyPlus has a slight advantage. For example, if the exterior envelope is such that it should do some self shading, then in EnergyPlus the surface shading is automatically determined from the geometry, but in TRNSYS Type 56 you would have to also set up additional shading fins. EnergyPlus has a more rigorous (and slower) model for interior thermal radiation enabling it to handle cases where the building's thermal behavior is closely coupled to the behavior of radiation-based mechanical systems.
