I found questions similar to mine but unfortunatelly no useful answers yet.
Anyway, I am using Honeybee_Export to OpenStudio component for GH and I am doing a Loads Calculation. One of the outputs I want ti get is:
Zone Opaque Surface Outside Face Conduction
Following the instructions from the component, that the input should be a complete energyplus component, I inputed the following:
Output:Variable,
*, !- Key Value
Zone Opaque Surface Outside Face Conduction, !- Variable Name
timestep; !- Reporting Frequency
Is this the correct way to do it? if not, where can I find more guidelines on how to do it? (I already tried to find the answer in the energyplus 847 pages documentation and posted in unmethours as well)
I would suggest first of all to check for the availability of the results you are searching for, for example I was looking for: Zone Opaque Surface Outside/Inside Face Conduction Gain
without checking if the idf file I was producing was ‘requesting’ it from E+.
There is an easy solution to that:
By plugging-in the rddfileAddress, from ‘Honeybee_export to OpenStudio’ to the 'Honeybee_Read Result Dictionary’
You get to see what is available:
TL DR;
Apparently E+ is not showing all the variables it is calculating, unless you ask.
So to the additionalStrings_ input instead of adding the desired output you have to ask for the Advanced Report Variables.
as you can see 19 outputs match my search, this of course only solves half of my issue, since I need both the outside AND inside face conduction but it is better than nothing.
So if you have any suggestions, as to how I can figure out the rest, I would really appreciate it.
If all that you need is to request an output from E+, you typically shouldn’t need to use additionaStrings_. The simulationsOutputs_ input to the OpenStudio component is made to accept any EnergyPlus output request as long as it is structured in IDF language. However, in your case, because you are requesting an output in the Advanced Report Variables, you do need to add this request to additionalStrings_ and then you can get the output data like so:
The reason why the Outside Face Conduction isn’t showing up in the .rdd is because you are looking at the big ladder E+ documentation for E+ 8.1, which was released years ago and I imagine is not the version of E+ that you are currently using. It seems they might have gotten rid of that output since then and maybe replaced it with something else. You will likely want to check the E+ documentation for version 8.9 if you are using OpenStudio 2.5 or E+ version 9.0 if you are using a later opensutdio. You can choose your version of the docs from here: https://bigladdersoftware.com/epx/docs/index.html
Or you can go back to using the version of E+ from years ago. 8.1 might be well before many of the bugs in OpenStudio SDK were fixed so you might need to use the Run Simulation component with this old E+ version instead of the OpenStudio component. All old versions of EP can be found on their github:
Thank you for the quick response @chris !
(Makes a lot more sense now …)
My understanding is that with this version of energyplus, energyplus 8.9 and OS 2.4, I can’t get the Zone Opaque Outside Surfaces Total Conduction Heat Gain/Loss Rate. Since I don’t want to downgrade my components, my next option is to get the Surface Inside/Outside Face Conduction Heat Gain/Loss Rate for each zone separately and calculate it myself. Correct?
The purpose of this exercise is to get the External/Internal Conduction Gains of each Zone.
I am guessing that there is no simpler way to get them.
I agree that the Zone Opaque Outside Surfaces Total Conduction Heat Gain/Loss Rate is probably the best way to keep track of the surface conduction. If you need some help parsing the surface-level results, the Surface Data Based On Type Detailed will likely be useful:
If want to look at what is happening on a zone-by-zone basis, you may need to write your own script to group the data based on the zone names in the header. The component above will at least help you identify interior conduction between zones vs conduction to the exterior.
