Can't assign HPWH air inlet/outlet node names

[shorowit]

General Summary

We'd like to assign names to the WaterHeaterHeatPumpWrappedCondenser object's air inlet/outlet nodes so they can be referenced in an EMS program.

Detailed Description

The heat pump water heater object has Air Inlet Node Name and Air Outlet Node Name fields. As described in the documentation, "If the Inlet Air Configuration field is set to ‘Schedule’, this node name should simply be a unique name that allows the user to receive output on conditions at this node for verification purposes." We are indeed using 'Schedule' as the configuration.

Possible Implementation

I would think there should be two new setters (setAirInletNodeName and setAirOutletNodeName) and corresponding getters, and these names would only be FTed if the Inlet Air Configuration is 'Schedule'.

[jmaguire1]

FWIW: The inlet air node being a schedule was something we did in case we have supply (or balanced) ducting, where the inlet air doesn't come from the same zone as the HPWH is installed in, so we can have different temperatures used for tank losses and inlet air temperature. I don't think we're going to support balanced or supply ducting anytime soon so we could theoretically just assign the node temperature to be the zone without using a schedule here.

Ideally this'd be fixed regardless, but some extra context.

[shorowit]

Good thinking @jmaguire1. Note that we will always have situations where we need to use a schedule (e.g., HPWH located in a MF common space, where we assume the ambient temperature if we're modeling a single dwelling unit). But since we only need the outlet node when the HPWH is in conditioned space, I guess what you're suggesting might work.

[jmaguire1]

This should still be fixed, but maybe it's not as urgent if we want to change this around. I will say the schedule approach is convenient even if we're not going to take advantage in as many situations, so it'd still be nice to fix this so it matches what's in the documentation.