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CBECC-com DOAS High-Rise Residential

Version CBECC-Com 2019.1.0 - Energy Plus v9.0 Project/model is a High Rise Residential which will be designer/permitted in the 2019 Code Cycle. Proposed building will have WSHP, Water-Cooled VRF, or Air-Source VRF; with a decoupled DOAS for ventilation (unconditioned direct OA to space).

The Standard (Baseline) Design is a 4 Pipe FCU with Water Cooled Chiller + Gas Boiler. Ventilation is via a balanced ventilation system (sort of). This is implemented into the model as an exhaust fan system and corresponding infiltration. The exhaust fan power will be adjust to accounting for an Exhaust and a Supply Fan.

Testing systems (and multiple other factors – ex: envelope parameters), indicates that the proposed is losing to the Standard in unexpected/unexplainable ways.

The Proposed building idf has a Zone Inlet Node List with two nodes - one for the TerminalUnit (from DOAS) and the other from the ZoneSystem. This is as expected for a decoupled ventilation system, yes? This should pass raw OA to the zone, and then the zone unit can pick up this load once it passed through a zone exhaust node.

The Standard building has a single Inlet Node from the 4 Pipe Fan Coil; and exhaust node list with 2 nodes - 1 to the 4 Pipe FCU and one to the Exhaust Fan. The Standard Design does have a 'ventilation' ZoneInfiltration object set with Flow/Zone which is equal to the zone ventilation requirements. It (and the Zone exhaust fan) have a schedule set to =1 for all hours (as expected).

The Proposed zone coil sizes at ~10Ton. The Standard zone coil is sizes at ~4Tons.

On a Building Basis. The Standard Design is ~400T. For a 365,000 SF building, this Ton/SF is wildly off. For the Proposed Design, the Load is ~1050T; which is close to the more reasonable 350 SF/T.

It would appear as though that in the Standard Design the Infiltration air load imposed on the zone is not being passed to the coils properly. Is this accurate? Is it possible that the ZoneInfiltration load is not imposed on the Zone 4Pipe FCU and it exhaust before being seen by the zone equipment? Have other had issues with Exhaust ventilation system/Infiltration/zone equipment sizing?

Also, on the Standard Design Fan:ZoneExhaust, the Field: Balanced Exhaust Fraction Schedule Name is set to =0 for all hours. The Documentation was confusing on how this either would/wouldn't allow for these infiltration air loads to be unbalanced and impact conditioning/airflow.

CBECC-com DOAS High-Rise Residential

Version CBECC-Com 2019.1.0 - Energy Plus v9.0 Project/model is a High Rise Residential which will be designer/permitted in the 2019 Code Cycle. Proposed building will have WSHP, Water-Cooled VRF, or Air-Source VRF; with a decoupled DOAS for ventilation (unconditioned direct OA to space).

The Standard (Baseline) Design is a 4 Pipe FCU with Water Cooled Chiller + Gas Boiler. Ventilation is via a balanced ventilation system (sort of). This is implemented into the model as an exhaust fan system and corresponding infiltration. The exhaust fan power will be adjust to accounting for an Exhaust and a Supply Fan.

Testing systems (and multiple other factors – ex: envelope parameters), indicates that the proposed is losing to the Standard in unexpected/unexplainable ways.

The Proposed building idf has a Zone Inlet Node List with two nodes - one for the TerminalUnit (from DOAS) and the other from the ZoneSystem. This is as expected for a decoupled ventilation system, yes? This should pass raw OA to the zone, and then the zone unit can pick up this load once it passed through a zone exhaust node.

The Standard building has a single Inlet Node from the 4 Pipe Fan Coil; and exhaust node list with 2 nodes - 1 to the 4 Pipe FCU and one to the Exhaust Fan. The Standard Design does have a 'ventilation' ZoneInfiltration object set with Flow/Zone which is equal to the zone ventilation requirements. It (and the Zone exhaust fan) have a schedule set to =1 for all hours (as expected).

The Proposed zone coil sizes at ~10Ton. The Standard zone coil is sizes at ~4Tons.

On a Building Basis. The Standard Design is ~400T. For a 365,000 SF building, this Ton/SF is wildly off. For the Proposed Design, the Load is ~1050T; which is close to the more reasonable 350 SF/T.

It would appear as though that in the Standard Design the Infiltration air load imposed on the zone is not being passed to the coils properly. Is this accurate? Is it possible that the ZoneInfiltration load is not imposed on the Zone 4Pipe FCU and it exhaust before being seen by the zone equipment? Have other had issues with Exhaust ventilation system/Infiltration/zone equipment sizing?

Also, on the Standard Design Fan:ZoneExhaust, the Field: Balanced Exhaust Fraction Schedule Name is set to =0 for all hours. The Documentation E+ documentation was confusing on how this either would/wouldn't allow for these infiltration air loads to be unbalanced and impact conditioning/airflow.