I took a look at the files you posted and found your source of confusion. You are currently reporting outputs for the "Electricity:Building" and "Gas:Building" meters, which indeed do not change between the two files. You probably want to be using the "Electricity:Facility" and "Gas:Facility" meters instead, as these meters include HVAC energy consumption. I switched to these meters in your IDF files and the results changed. If you open up the *.mtd file after running a simulation, you can see what outputs are included in these two meters.
For example, here are the outputs included in "Electricity:Building":
For Meter=Electricity:Building [J], ResourceType=Electricity, Group=Building, contents are:
LIVING HARDWIRED LIGHTING1:Lights Electric Energy
LIVING PLUG-IN LIGHTING1:Lights Electric Energy
DISHWASHER1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
REFRIGERATOR1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
CLOTHESWASHER1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
GAS_DRYER1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
GAS_RANGE1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
TELEVISION1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
GAS_MELS1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
IECC_ADJ1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
LIVING_UNIT1:Zone Ventilation Fan Electric Energy
and here are the outputs included in "Electricity:Facility":
For Meter=Electricity:Facility [J], ResourceType=Electricity, contents are:
LIVING HARDWIRED LIGHTING1:Lights Electric Energy
LIVING PLUG-IN LIGHTING1:Lights Electric Energy
DISHWASHER1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
REFRIGERATOR1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
CLOTHESWASHER1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
GAS_DRYER1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
GAS_RANGE1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
TELEVISION1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
GAS_MELS1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
IECC_ADJ1:Electric Equipment Electric Energy
LIVING_UNIT1:Zone Ventilation Fan Electric Energy
EXTERIOR-LIGHTS_UNIT1:Exterior Lights Electric Energy
GARAGE-LIGHTS_UNIT1:Exterior Lights Electric Energy
SUPPLY FAN_UNIT1:Fan Electric Energy
MAIN FUEL HEATING COIL_UNIT1:Heating Coil Electric Energy
DX COOLING COIL_UNIT1:Cooling Coil Electric Energy
MAINS PRESSURE_UNIT1:Pump Electric Energy
DX COOLING COIL_UNIT1:Cooling Coil Crankcase Heater Electric Energy
(Note the HVAC outputs above.)
I've now downloaded the files multiple times, ran them on different machines and different EPlus versions. Original residential prototypes are in version 8.6 which I cant download for windows (though I'm still pretty sure the problem is with me rather than the files) so running them as is is going to be hard.
For a bit more context. I took two residential IECC prototypes, both single family slab on grade buildings in the same climate zone meeting the same code cycle requirements. One had a gas furnace and one had a ducted heat pump system. I simply replaced all gas furnace related idf content with the heat pump related idf content. This was expected to represent an heat pump retrofit. I ran the models, then used the .mdd to drop some building level hourly meter objects into the baseline and retrofit models. it is the resulting CSVs that are the same for the baseline and proposed simulations.
The CSV files will output whatever information you request using Output:Variable. What Output:Variables have you requested in the idf files? If it's information about weather, or schedule values, or lighting, it's entirely possible that the output csv files will be equal even for different idf files.
Hi, thanks for the reply, I'm outputting the following:
Output:Meter,Electricity:Building ,Hourly; Output:Meter,Gas:Building ,Hourly
and, because i replaced a gas furnace with a heat pump, these should definitely be different. I've dug into a bit, the .eso files are the same except for the time simulated but the eio files show different system components. super weird...
Here is a link to the idf and epw files in question if anyone feels like having a look