Can discharge coefficient be scheduled in HB Window Opening?

Hello everyone,

I am trying to simulate night natural ventilation in a Spanish apartment during summer. This apartment has external blinds that obstruct wind (they are rigid PVC or wood panels). In Spanish culture, it is common to use this kind of blind at night to block the early morning sun and city lights.

The first simulation results suggest that the discharge coefficient that I have applied to simulate wind obstruction produced by blinds hinders night cooling with natural ventilation. I want to test the impact of different blind use schedules on night natural ventilation. However, as far as I know, it is not possible to do it with the current HB Window Opening component.

Is there a workaround to simulate what I want?

Hi @avve,

As far as I know it’s not possible to schedule a numeric input in an EnergyPlus IDF, so also not via Honeybee.

Kind regards,
Marc

1 Like

@marctavenier is right that there’s no way to do this with Honeybee. With the honeybee-energy SDK object for VentilationOpening, you can set the Discharge Coefficient for each Aperture but dynamically changing the Discharge Coefficient over the course of the simulation is not something we support.

You may also be correct that there’s no way to do it by editing the IDF, though I have been surprised by how many things can be customized with the EnergyPlus EMS (it certainly supports a lot of things related to dynamic constructions and various controls within the AFN). The EMS is not for the faint of heart but, if you badly needed to model this, I might just recommend researching the EMS just to be sure it’s not feasible there.

1 Like