I was wondering, how do we model non-AC cooling appliances in Honeybee? I wish to model ceiling fans (forced ventilation), and dehumidifiers, and water based coolers that essentially work as humidifiers and coolers. Most custom appliance options in Honeybee seem to be more for appliances like refrigerators, washing machines and so on. I’d appreciate any leads to tutorials!
Best,
Aishwarya
Are ceiling fans considered forced ventilation? (Honest question)
I always assumed they were just “move the air around” objects more so than they would be ventilation objects.
anyway: I may be wrong but come dehumidification objects: I’m 90% sure Honeybee doesn’t contain EnergyPlus Dehumid objects? tho could definitely get your model 98% of the way there and manually via ep-launch / other means append those objects into the idf created by LBT.
@MingboPeng I just looked through my IronBug install (has EMS: for version context): Don’t think IronBug has them either?
moreover: here is documentation to all the LBT tooling: and is searchable
Customizing appliance loads, including latent for things such as refridgerators
Usually not. I guess if you mounted one right underneath an operable skylight it could be but, when it’s just on a normal ceiling, it’s not going to change the Room energy balance or the EnergyPlus simulation. So there’s no need to include it in your Honeybee Model. Of course, the air movement from a ceiling fan has a huge impact on occupant thermal comfort but the way that you’d account for this is in the thermal comfort model that you use to process the energy simulation results. For example, by changing the _air_speed_ input on the LB PMV Comfort component. I guess, if you wanted to show energy savings from ceiling fans, you can boost up the cooling setpoint of the room to a temperature where the occupants would still be comfortable with the ceiling fans on.
The Honeybee HVAC templates will include humidifier objects if the HVAC can support it and you have a humidification setpoint on it. There’s no support for dehumidification beyond just running the cooling coil of HVAC systems. If you’re looking to add a desiccant dehumidifier, I think you might be able to do it with additional strings. You can definitely add it with a Measure. I’m not sure about IronBug.
There are Evaporative Cooling system HVAC templates available on the HB Heat Cool HVAC Templates component. You can also add things like evaporative cooling towers using additional strings, similar to what you see here