What information are you trying to get from modeling the solar panels? If you are just trying to get the kWh produced for the array in a year you can use NREL's PV Watts calculator. Then you can post-process the kWh produced by the panels separately from your OS model. If you want to have it in the model, E+ has a object called "Generator:Photovoltaic". See the E+ InputOutputReference for more information on this object. You can put this object in your OS model with a script.
@TaylorRoberts , do we have something similar for thermal panel by NREL?
OpenStudio doesn't directly support PV yet, but we do have an EnergyPlus Measure that takes shading surfaces already in the model and creates PV using PhotovoltaicPerformance:Simple objects. Arguments are exposed for the type of shading surface to use (Site, Building, or Space/Zone) along with the fraction of surface that is covered with PV, and the panel efficiency. You could easily update this to do a string search on surface name if you didn't want it to apply to all shading surfaces of a specific type.
Hi David, I was looking at the meassure and theres this value for the generator Rated Electric power ouput "20000" do you know in which units is this value?
@Julian Nino to learn more about hat look at the EnergyPlus documentation for Electric Load Center:Generation
It is worth noting that since the original post we did add some PV objects directly into OpenStudio. I just posted an example measure on BCL that Adds Rooftop PV. It works by creating vertically offset copies of roof surfaces, as shading surfaces, and then applies PV to those shading surfaces.
@David Goldwasser where can I find the results concerning the PV? Because after adding the measure and running I found the same eplus report (tables) and the same OS report.
You have to add the output variables for the PV production and look for those results yourself (or add them to your own OS report measure). Also, you can now add PV objects directly from an OpenStudio measure (look at OpenStudio::Model::GeneratorPhotovoltaic::simple)
@rpg777 thanks for your reply but I actually used the add output variable measure to see: the Generator Requested Electric Power, Generator Produced DC Electric Energy, Generator PV Array Efficiency, Generator Produced DC Electric Power and only found in the Openstudio result report this and nothing related to PV in the EnergyPlus Tables.
PS: I also looked in the csv file but found nothing.
Asked: 2015-04-09 13:13:39 -0600
Seen: 2,305 times
Last updated: Apr 09 '15
