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How can I model a district cooling system by using EnergyPlus?

asked 2015-03-23 13:02:51 -0600

Niro's avatar

updated 2015-07-11 14:57:18 -0600

I am going to model a district cooling system for hotels and office building in a city. I have only chiller capacities and operating details of hotels and offices. There are hotels and offices on two sides of proposed location for the district cooling plant. Please help to model this.

Moved From Answer Aim of the study is sizing appropriate district cooling system to supply the cooling demand of the large commercial buildings in Colombo North. This is going to implement in the near future. Cooling is to provide multiple building in several locations. currently these buildings are running with individual water cool central air conditioning system. I only know operating capacities (percentage of chiller capacity) of the chillers during night time and day time, pumps and cooling towers' power and operating times of the chillers, pumps and cooling towers.

Can we do something to EVALUATION ON THE POTENTIAL OF DISTRICT COOLING SYSTEM FOR THESE COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS with existing data?

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@Niro this question is somewhat vague, can you provide more details? Is this a single building or multiple? What is the purpose of the model (code compliance, certification, etc)?

MatthewSteen's avatar MatthewSteen  ( 2015-03-23 21:42:38 -0600 )edit

Aim of the study is sizing appropriate district cooling system to supply the cooling demand of the large commercial buildings in Colombo North. This is going to implement in the near future. Cooling is to provide multiple building in several locations. currently these buildings are running with individual water cool central air conditioning system. I only know operating capacities (percentage of chiller capacity) of the chillers during night time and day time, pumps and cooling towers' power and operating times of the chillers, pumps and cooling towers.

Niro's avatar Niro  ( 2015-03-28 10:45:28 -0600 )edit

Can we do something to EVALUATION ON THE POTENTIAL OF DISTRICT COOLING SYSTEM FOR THESE COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS with existing data?

Niro's avatar Niro  ( 2015-03-28 10:45:47 -0600 )edit

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answered 2015-03-25 12:59:12 -0600

For the supply/central plant side, if you want to model the equipment (chillers, pumps, etc.), you could use a PlantLoop with a Chiller:Electric:EIR and a Pump:VariableSpeed attached. If you don't care about modeling the chillers and you just want to provide chilled water at a given temperature, try the DistrictCooling object.

For the demand/load side, you could model those buildings and put Coil:Cooling:Water objects on simple HVAC systems to provide the cooling and use zone multipliers and per area loads to make the models simple. If you already know the load shape and don't want to model the buildings explicitly, you could use a LoadProfile:Plant to simulate the building loads.

The Plant Application Guide.pdf that comes installed with EnergyPlus at C:\EnergyPlusV8-2-0\Documentation is also a very good resource for this type of modeling because it shows some of the more complex configurations that are possible.

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If I already know the load shape and don't want to model the buildings explicitly, I am going to use LoadProfile:Plant to simulate the building loads as you proposed. Is this needed to do in Open Studio or EP Launch? Because I am using this first time then I have no idea to use this. In open studio, LoadProfile:Plant is not available in objects. If I want to use EP launch how to do it?

Niro's avatar Niro  ( 2015-03-29 11:50:36 -0600 )edit

Can you send me sample tutorial for this?

Niro's avatar Niro  ( 2015-04-08 05:11:03 -0600 )edit

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Asked: 2015-03-23 13:02:51 -0600

Seen: 1,194 times

Last updated: Mar 28 '15