This is my first time posting on the forums, I’m excited to get some feedback!
To summarize my project, two other students and I are currently trying to determine which HVAC systems will best fit our building. We have constructed the building model in Rhino and have broken it down into 7 zones for ventilation specification. In order to determine which HVAC systems to use, we have created 4 different options, each containing multiple hvac systems that will fulfill each zone requirement. In order to run the analysis that we want, we need to run these 4 different hvac options as well as 2 different primary systems for each of the 4 options (8 total combinations). The questions we have are as follows:
Is it possible to combine primary systems and secondary systems separately in honeybee without creating custom profiles in ironbug? For example, if we wanted to gshp with vav
We know that it is possible to combine some elements between honeybee legacy and the new version of honeybee within the ladybug tools family, but does this carry over to the hvac system selection tools? There are some systems in honeybee legacy that we would like to use but we are simulating our system in the new ladybug tools.
Our goal is to do an iterative study (colibri), we have seen ways where you can modify the details of mechanical systems in the OpenStudio interface, but this does not lend itself to an iterative study.
Any feedback anyone has would be greatly appreciated!
The geometry in the files that you uploaded is not clean (the room volumes are not aligned with one another such that the intersection creates surfaces that are too small to be considered valid within the tolerance).
But, putting this aside, I will try to answer your questions:
The +100 HVAC templates within the new LBT Plugin are each complete systems, including both air loops and plant loops. I am guessing that this distinction between air loop and plant loop is what you mean by “primary and secondary.” So, no, there’s no option with these templates to separately design the plant and the air loop. It’s just beyond the scope of what the HVAC templates are designed to do as you see described here and so you should use Ironbug if you need to design the loops separately. There’s also no template for “VAV with GSHP” as these systems tend to require expertise to design. This is predominantly because trying to size a ground loop to meet the peak demand of a VAV system is almost certainly going to be cost prohibitive. To phrase it another way, you’ll only be able to size the ground loop to meet a fraction of the peak demand and you’ll likely have to rely on auxiliary chillers + boilers to meet the rest of the peak. You’ll also probably have play around with supply temperatures a bit. All of this is just to say that, even if there were a template for this system, the sizing of the different elements would be extremely difficult to automate. So you really should be designing this type of system with IronBug in order to make sure you’re integrating the expertise that is required to pull that type of system off.
Each of the templates that you could build with honeybee-legacy has an equivalent system in the new LBT plugin. But, no, there’s no way to use the legacy HVAC components with the new LBT plugin. You have to use the new LBT components.