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add Efficiency field to DistrictCooling and DistrictHeating #7690
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@MatthewSteen The EnvironmentalImpactFactors object can do one form of this. Is this adequate? At a minimum, this object should be mentioned in the DistrictCooling/Heating docs. Or perhaps better to move these fields to the DistrictCooling/Heating objects. Would you need a choice of what fuel type to convert to?
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@mjwitte I wasn't familiar with this object, which could work in some situations. However it's nice in general and needed for LEED to have the central plant's fuel separate from the building's, which the District* objects easily do. |
Relevant UnmetHours question. https://unmethours.com/question/84057/getset-default-cop-for-district-cooling-via-openstudio-sdk/ |
I want to add more information regarding this request because @mjwitte did not get what @MatthewSteen meant. Currently, it is possible to set a COP value for district heating and cooling, but they are used for environmental impact calculations in the PollutionModule.cc (line 6244 to 6255), as shown below.
Therefore, when energy consumption is requested, district heating and cooling show the building loads instead of fuel energy consumption. This causes a problem in LEED projects and the report generated by third-party software such as DesignBuilder. The following images show the LEED Report for a simple case where the proposed building uses District Heating and cooling. In this case, it is expected to have less total energy use in the proposed building, but it is not reported correctly because the cooling end use reported the same number as the cooling load. This is clear in the next table, where you can note that district cooling and district heating are reported separate from the other fuels. Finally, the correct request of this post should be to include the COP in energy calculations and reporting instead of only environmental analyses. Thanks in advance, and do not hesitate to request more information if necessary. |
So, what would the ABUPS report look like with these district efficiency inputs active? Would there still be a column for District Cooling or would it be added to Electricity? The boundary volume for ABUPS is what's supplied to the building, so it wouldn't be correct to keep the District Cooling/Heating columns and alter them by the efficiency factor. |
@mjwitte since the control volume for the ABUPS is the building, it would make sense to add the gross district energy use in a dedicated district table. Perhaps the EnergyConsumptionDistrictHeatingCoolingMonthly, the LEED Summary, or a new one. |
And what would be in ABUPS? |
@mjwitte the net energy use from the district plant to the building? |
And if a user does not request EnvironmentalImpactFactors does the district cooling plant have a COP = 1? |
@rraustad it's my understanding that the I think emissions and energy should be reported separately and haven't used the former. Could the COPs from the The use case for LEED is using the Distric* object(s) without an |
For LEED reporting, where is the COP for district plants reported now? or is it even reported now?
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@rraustad that's exactly what this feature request is about, add Efficiency field to DistrictCooling and DistrictHeating. It's not available in EnergyPlus so isn't reportable. This is currently done by a LEED modeler using postprocessing, when it could be a useful field for LEED and other use cases. |
I understand. What I was asking is if there is a place holder for district plant COP somewhere in LEED documents. |
I'm not sure what that means. Some numbers for the ABUPS and LEED district cooling columns would help. If the building has a district cooling load of 200GJ, then ABUPS must report 200GJ, regardless of the proxy COP. In EnergyPlus, it's a utility, just like Electricity or Gas, and ABUPS reports the building's consumption of that resource. If the building is really served by a district cooling loop, it buys chilled water, how it's made is irrelevant. The source energy reporting applies the proxy COP and turns it into electricity. Same for pollutants. The source energy also applies an electric source efficiency. I don't know what the LEED rules are for comparing different fuel types, but I'm sure you don't get credit for less energy use with an electric boiler vs gas boiler. It seems that the best solution here is to add some columns to the LEED Summary, Energy Use Summary subtable that would report district sources as equivalent electricity and gas (and labeled as such). Or just use Chiller:ConstantCOP and a Boiler:HotWater with flat efficiency curves. I'll give you that the EnvironmentalImpactFactors and FuelFactors and how they interact are confusing. If these aren't in the idf, their default values are used for source energy reporting. For district cooling the source factor for electricity is also applied, which defaults to 3.167. BTW the district heating efficiencies seem awfully low?
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@MatthewSteen Yet another question - when using district cooling this way, do you even care that district cooling is reported? One option is to have an efficiency and a fuel type in the district object and just have it consume electricity or whatever directly. That approach would mean all district cooling columns would be zero. |
I'll have to revisit this and the LEED requirements since I haven't done a LEED project with district energy in several years. Here's the documentation for the previous version of LEED. https://www.usgbc.org/sites/default/files/DES%20Guidance.pdf @mjwitte to answer your question directly above, yes. LEED does/did require district energy to be reported separately so that projects can claim savings for central plant efficiency, which is an option for projects. The problem with using |
Not to derail the discussion, but I'll point out that we ran into the same issue with the I keep considering a proposal to relax these E+ object limits and issue a warning if the value is above 1 instead. I'd even do the implementation myself. I know that doesn't solve the larger problem here, but it would at least allow the workaround to function again. |
From this LEED doc for district plants:
And this is interesting. The modeler needs to use district plant in baseline and proposed for a stand-alone building.
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Feature request to add a simple efficiency field (e.g. COP) to the District* objects, which would be helpful for cases where the user does not need to explicitly model a central plant but wants to account for its efficiency. This is a common scenario for LEED projects.
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