1. Development and validation of an HVAC on/off controller in EnergyPlus for energy simulation of residential and small commercial buildings.
- Author
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Cetin, Kristen S, Fathollahzadeh, Mohammad Hassan, Kunwar, Niraj, Do, Huyen, and Tabares-Velasco, Paulo Cesar
- Subjects
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BUILDINGS & the environment , *HEATING , *VENTILATION , *COMMERCIAL building energy consumption , *COMMERCIAL building energy conservation , *COMPUTER simulation - Abstract
Highlight • New on/off controller for residential applications validated using minute-level field data. • On/off controller improves the HVAC accuracy around 19% in terms of NMBE. • On/off cycling makes the operation and associated energy use more realistic. Abstract Heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are sized using design conditions, conditions that occur only a small percentage of time each year. As a result, HVAC systems frequently operate at part-load conditions since their capacity is larger than necessary except in the most extreme weather conditions. Most HVAC systems for residential and small commercial buildings in the U.S. use on/off controls, however, most energy modeling software tools do not simulate the on/off nature of this type of HVAC controls. This paper presents the development and validation of an on/off controller for residential applications in EnergyPlus using a custom EMS (energy management system). This controller is validated using minute-level field data collected for a house located in Sacramento, California with simulated occupancy and internal loads. The results obtained from EnergyPlus with and without the use of the developed on/off controller are also compared. The application of the developed on/off controller improves the HVAC energy use results accuracy around 19% in terms of the Normalized Mean Bias Error (NMBE) at the one-minute level compared to the results without the application of the on/off controller. It also makes the nature of operation and associated energy use signal of the HVAC system more realistic in terms of the on/off nature of the residential direct expansion coils. Furthermore, in this paper, the accuracy improvement of the results dominated by the internal loads is investigated by applying the one-minute schedule compared to the usual hourly schedules for the internal thermal loads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
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