District heating and Cooling profiles to Central Plant Model

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After attempting to follow this process, here is my understanding as well as some other questions I have.

The OS:LoadProfile:Plant object requires three inputs (Load Schedule, Peak Flow Rate, and Flow rate fraction schedule).

I can get the load Schedule by running each individual building model and enabling the output variables” District Cooling Chilled Water Energy” and “District Heating Hot Water Energy” with an hourly timestep Get the .csv file and apply the measure “Add Interval Schedule From File”

Questions:

1. In my case, will the LoadProfile:Plant object be placed on the demand side of the chilled water loop or the demand side of the condesor water loop?
2. Do cooling load values that I get from the output variables have to be entered as a negative value when creating the schedule? a. The Input output reference suggests this but I’m not sure if that only applies to schedules that contain both heating and cooling loads b. My model will include a chilled and condenser water loop with the cooling load profile as the demand and a hot water loop with the heating load as the demand

3.How can I obtain the peak flow rate and the Flow rate fraction from my individual building models? I don’t see an output variable that will provide this information?

1. If the building models represent loads on the chilled water loop, put the LoadProfile:Plant on the demand side of the chilled water loop.
2. Cooling load values need to be negative.
3. You can output the loop flow rate, calculate the flow fractions as (hourly value)/(peak value), e.g. in a spreadsheet program, and input the calculated values as the flow fraction schedule.

Thank you for your help!