Honeybee Energy Modelling - Chris Mackey's videos

[Fede]

HI Guys,
I started following some of the fantastic Chris Mackey’s videos about Energy modelling with Honeybee (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8ncENwXpek&list=PLruLh1AdY-SgW4uDtNSMLeiUmA8YXEHT_&index=1) and as a way to start familiarising with the process, I followed the videos step by step rebuilding the gh definitions.
Of course, I encountered a series of problems regarding the fact that the videos are 6 years old, the methods and components have been updated, but I decided to give it a try.

here the file which cover from 0 to the video n°7 video.
part4.gh (643.4 KB)

I noticed some differences (which I will list below) so I wonder if somebody can check the file and tell me if it is overall making sense and all the components have been used in the right way.

first of all look at the model in the video and then the result I get from my reconstructed definition.

Mackey’s model

My model

at a basic level, they are qualitatively similar but substantial different in certain rooms, attica and the small room in the center of the building, and in general the kwh/mq have very different bounding values, from 5 to 38 in my model and from 4 to 18 in the other.

one more difference is in is the Heating load at hour 3, again the values differences is now less relevant, however a difference in the heating of the attica is quite evident.

video’s model

my model

Did the differences are due to the update of the plugin and models used or is my model not set in the right way?

thanks in advance for any advice
Federico

[chris]

@Fede ,

Thank you for updating the file and sharing it. I took a look at it and it all looks good. There’s a lot that has changed in 6 years and, if I had to give the two most likely reasons for the difference in results:

1. We fixed a lot of bugs in the export of geometry to energy plus in the first year or so after we released those videos. EnergyPlus has A LOT of tedious rules that it expects the geometry to follow (eg. all vertices must be counter-clockwise starting from the upper-left vertex). So our fixing of those issues made the results more accurate.

2. I am sure that you are using a much newer version of EnergyPlus than I was using in those videos (I think I was using E+ 7.2) and there have been a lot of improvements on the E+ side of things.

So long story short: the results in your updated file are much more trustworthy than the ones you see in the video.

[Fede]

HI Chris,
thanks for the reply and for checking the file!
I am glad that was correct!