Hi there! Jsut upgraded up HBv1.3 and running an energy model and noticed some interesting zone filtering coming out of the solar_gains output. For model which has 18 zones, only 8 branches are coming out of the output and the weird part is that many of these are zones that do not have windows.
Oddly, when connecting the solar_gains to the Color HB Color Rooms component, the visualization is correct - it shows the rooms that dont have windows with 0 total transmitted solar. I noticed a past thread on errors with the HB Color Rooms component under the new air boundary component but I think this is different? I see there is a Solar Exposure component but I dont think thats where the error is? The rooms that are available to query the transmitted solar dont have windows nor air walls.
All of the Rooms that are connected by AirBoundaries get grouped together by EnergyPlus and so you only ever get a single solar data collection for that whole group of Rooms (aka. Solar Enclosure).
The Color Rooms component is just dividing up the solar energy across the whole enclosure based on the exterior window area of each Room. So you probably want to take the exact values per room with a grain of salt. But the sum of all the room solar energy is equivalent to what you see in the “Solar Enclosure 1” data collection.
Thanks for the swift response @chris but how does this relate to the 0_Core room having solar_gain data out of the HB Read Room Energy component when that space does not have windows?
There doesn’t appear to be any apertures in the aforementioned room, as well as what @chris said: without air walls; there’s not going to be any inter-zonal solar gain, a windowless box in E+: the solar gain would be output via the surface energy transfer outputs; and likely not explicitly stated as solar rag gain, I can’t remember exactly what it looks like but that’s all I have that seemed topical.
Trevor’s explanation is correct and, to clarify a little more, the data collection for the 0_Core room with no windows is a data collection composed entirely of 0 values. In other words, you still get solar gain results from E+ even when there are no windows.
Thanks Chris and Trevor. I recall wrestling with the data and seeing values for the 0_Core but upon further inspection, I see a list of 0s for 0_Core and values associated with the Solar Enclosure.
I’ll need to evaluate the benefit of airwalls compared to the degree of granularity of solar analysis I want to do.
Either way, kudos with v1.3. I am enjoying the updates!
