Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
Impacts of external shading in EnergyPlus are set using the Solar Distribution input field of the Building object. You would want to set this to "FullExterior" at a bare minimum to account for how external shading surfaces affect solar gains on other surfaces, but there are other options to account for beam radiation distributed on internal surfaces and external reflections as well. If this field is set to "MinimalShadowing" EnergyPlus will calculate the incident solar radiation on the PV surface correctly, but then assume that the building surface behind will also receive the same amount of incident solar radiation.
In OpenStudio, you can change this input field under the Simulation Settings tab, then expanding the Simulation Control area. Reference the screen shot below.
To model the electricity generation of the PV array, you can look at Unmet Hours posts HERE and HERE
