We are working on a residential apartment project. There will be independent split units in each flat/dwelling unit. Is there anyway we can get the energy consumption of each flat/dwelling unit separately.
As @mdahlhausen alluded to, there is no built-in EnergyPlus capability for this. You have to disaggregate the outputs by requesting several Output:Variable objects.
However, an alternative would be to model each building unit as a separate EnergyPlus model, using adiabatic surfaces as appropriate. Then there would be no work required to get the energy consumption of each building unit separately. This of course works best if each unit has individual heating, cooling, and hot water systems.
Add the 'Zone Lights Electric Energy' and 'Zone Electric Equipment Electric Energy' Output:Variable objects to your model. If your HVAC system and domestic hot water systems are per-unit, you can make output variables for these objects and record them for each zone. Otherwise if they are served by a central system you'll need to allocate energy use by system load or some other means.
In my model, the eplusout.mdd file shows meters for each zone, for example:
Output:Meter,Electricity:Zone:Zone Name 1,hourly; !- [J] Output:Meter,Electricity:Zone:Zone Name 2,hourly; !- [J] Output:Meter,Electricity:Zone:Zone Name 3,hourly; !- [J]
Is this the electricity used by each zone, including lighting, equipment, cooling, heating, etc.?
Plus, is there a way to make these show up the same way Electricity:Facility shows up in OpenStudio Results, i.e. by monthly consumption and demand, with the nice bar graphics?
@mattkockh I know the zone meter will include the lighting and equipment since those are default meters, but I don't know if it is smart enough to include zone hvac components as well. You'll need to test that out with additional output meters.
You can visualize meters in Dview. As of this time, there is no reporting zone energy at the zone level similar to the openstudio results measure.
Asked: 5 years ago
Seen: 170 times
Last updated: Nov 18 '19
