EnergyPlus did add the HeatPump:PlantLoop:EIR:Cooling (and Heating) objects in version 9.4, meant to cool or heat a water loop by transferring heat to air or water. Some ideas on implementing this:
- The objects are currently constant flow, so you can use EMS actuators like Pump Mass Flow Rate or System Node Mass Flow Rate Setpoint to change that to variable flow
- You are correct that there was an issue found related to autosizing flow rates and capacity. You can find more discussion on this topic in an Unmet Hours post. This issue has been fixed and merged into the source code, but won't be available until the v9.6 release expected in end of September 2021. If you don't want to wait for that public release, you can install a pre-release version that's been built by the EnergyPlus development team.
