Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
Buildings have a large amount of thermal storage in the building materials. For this reason, changing the thermostat set point temperature will impose a large demand on the HVAC system. The HVAC system will need a very high capacity to overcome the loads (both external and internal to the building) and meet the new set point temperature. The greater the change in thermostat set point temperature the larger the capacity needed by the HVAC system. In this example file the HVAC capacity is autosized to meet the load as determined by the thermostat settings for the design days (summer and winter). You could either force the HVAC capacity by entering data for any field that is autosized or you could use the ZoneHVAC:IdealLoadsAirSystem object to provide the needed capacity at each time step. According to ExampleFiles-ObjectsLink.html, in the example files folder, the example file 5Zone_IdealLoadsAirSystems_ReturnPlenum.idf is one file that uses the ideal HVAC system. You might try using this example file for your study.
