How can I create an unconditioned thermal zone?
I'm studying thermal behavior for a building without adding HVAC system or ideal loads. So, I need to create the unconditioned thermal zone.
If the building has multiple spaces, does the created thermal zone can be assigned for all spaces or should I create multiple unconditioned thermal zone?
In E+, unless you put a ThermostatSetpoint object and a heating/cooling system(or IdealLoads), the Zone will be unconditioned.
In OpenStudio, unless you input a heating and a cooling schedule (if no cooling, put a really high value but still input it) and a heating/cooling system (or IdealLoads), the ThermalZone will be translated to an E+ Zone that doesn't have a ThermostatSetpoint, and therefore unconditioned.
As far as whether you should create one big Zone or several smaller ones, you have to understand the underlying concept of E+. The Zone is "Thermal", not geometric, that is why we usually call it a Thermal Zone. A Zone means one node in the calculation: the heat balance and the condition of the Zone will be calculated at each timestep (temperature, humidity, gains, etc). The Condition of the Zone is also assumed to be perfectly mixed by default. It means that if you define one Zone, you get one temperature for example. If you're interested in knowing what the temperature is in a perimeter room that has windows versus a core zone, then you must define several Zones.
Note that a Zone should also be convex as much as possible to avoid inaccuracies in the calculations, especially for Solar, so that might justify making more than one if your building is not shaped like a perfect rectangle.
I suggest you read the Getting Started document that comes with EnergyPlus, especially but not limited to the A Methodology for Using Energyplus - Step 2: “Zone” the Building
thanks a lot @Julien Marrec, in openstudio (attributes) have to make ideal loads = no, or let it no change?
@Julien Marrec after i run the simulation i got the following errors:
-Process exited with a non-zero exit code of: 1 -Error report file indicates that the process did not complete successfully -IP: Blank "required" fields found in input -IP: Out of "range" values and/or blank required fields found in input -IP: Errors occurred on processing IDF file. Preceding condition(s) cause termination. can you help me to resolve these errors? thanks in advance
This is unrelated to this question. Do a search first to see if you cannot find the answer, if not open a new question. Include more details, currently what you provide here isn't enough. The E+ error log should tell you which object is faulty (with out of range and/or blank fields). This should tell you what to fix.
Asked: 2017-06-14 16:30:58 -0500
Seen: 1,558 times
Last updated: Jun 16 '17
Please refrain from tagging people directly in questions, and try to add a tag for the specific software you're using if appropriate (here E+ I guess, could be OpenStudio too). Thanks.