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the effect of timestep on peak cooling(heating) load

asked 2020-03-29 11:38:08 -0600

Wjkkkkkk's avatar

updated 2024-11-01 15:39:18 -0600

sashadf1's avatar

Hi everybody!

I am doing the simulation work for a conference center to get the information of cooling and heating load in o OpenStudio, the following is the problem i met:

in my report, there were several tags about load, such as designed load and caculated load of which the results were relatively normal. However, the peak cooling(heating)demand of the whole building were just too much(twice as much as the sum of designed load of each zone), which might represented refrigerators with gigantic capacity. This was far beyond my estimated value of the peak load, so i checked the "sensible heat gain summary", and the "Opaque Surface Conduction and Other Heat Addition" was the contributor of such a high peak load demand.

Then I attempted to change the time step from 6/hr to 1/hr, the peak cooling(heating) load demand was only 1/6 of previous value, and so was the "Opaque Surface Conduction and Other Heat Addition" ,which seemed normal this time.

So, my question is why the timestep has such big effects on the peak cooling(heating) demand and "Opaque Surface Conduction and Other Heat Addition", and which value of peak load demand by different timestep should i accept?

Thanks a lot!!!

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answered 2024-12-20 13:57:59 -0600

sashadf1's avatar

Running the model at different timesteps affects the accuracy of the zone fundamental heat balance, which drives most of what happens in E+. It also affects simulation speed, but that is typically pretty short with the E+ engine these days.

E+ has recommended number of timesteps per hour for different use cases (building w/ HVAC, w/out HVAC, etc.)

You can run the model at different timesteps and you can report the output at different timesteps. Decreasing the timestep interval (increasing the number of timesteps per hour) and reporting loads at the timestep frequency typically increases the peak zone loads reported from the annual weather file runperiod.

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Asked: 2020-03-29 11:38:08 -0600

Seen: 135 times

Last updated: 18 hours ago