Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
The PNNL Prototype Building Models (also known as Commercial Reference Building Models) can generate hourly indoor and outdoor air temperatures using the Output:Variable object, as shown below.
Output:Variable,*,Zone Mean Air Temperature,Hourly;
Output:Variable,*,Site Outdoor Air Drybulb Temperature,Hourly;
If you search for "Output:Variable" in the IDF (EnergyPlus input file) for any PNNL prototype that you downloaded, you will find them with "!" at the beginning of the text line, like below.
! Output:Variable,*,Site Outdoor Air Wetbulb Temperature,Hourly;
This means this line is a comment that EnergyPlus will ignore. That is why the PNNL prototypes you download don't generate ESO files -- all of the output variables are commented out.
There are plenty of posts on Unmet Hours about selecting correct output variables if you search in the "output-variable" tag. Here is one about adding them in IDF Editor, and here is one about more background on how you can review all possible output variables that can be generated by a given input file.
