HVAC DOAS templates

Hi @chris,

I did a batch simulation with colibri, for all standard HB DOAS HVAC Templates. I discovered that all
templates with baseboard electric, gas unit heaters and no heat resulted in a fatal error during the simulation with the folowing error report:

Program Version,EnergyPlus, Version 9.3.0-baff08990c, YMD=2020.11.18 11:40,
** Severe ** [PlantEquipmentOperationSchemes][Hot Water Loop Operation Schemes] - Missing required property ‘control_scheme_1_name’.
** Severe ** [PlantEquipmentOperationSchemes][Hot Water Loop Operation Schemes] - Missing required property ‘control_scheme_1_object_type’.
** Severe ** [PlantEquipmentOperationSchemes][Hot Water Loop Operation Schemes] - Missing required property ‘control_scheme_1_schedule_name’.
** Fatal ** Errors occurred on processing input file. Preceding condition(s) cause termination.
…Summary of Errors that led to program termination:
… Reference severe error count=3
… Last severe error=[PlantEquipmentOperationSchemes][Hot Water Loop Operation Schemes] - Missing required property ‘control_scheme_1_schedule_name’.
************* Warning: Node connection errors not checked - most system input has not been read (see previous warning).
************* Fatal error – final processing. Program exited before simulations began. See previous error messages.
************* EnergyPlus Warmup Error Summary. During Warmup: 0 Warning; 0 Severe Errors.
************* EnergyPlus Sizing Error Summary. During Sizing: 0 Warning; 0 Severe Errors.
************* EnergyPlus Terminated–Fatal Error Detected. 0 Warning; 3 Severe Errors; Elapsed Time=00hr 00min 0.25sec

Runtime error (PythonException): ** Fatal ** Errors occurred on processing input file. Preceding condition(s) cause termination.

Traceback:
line 245, in script

It looks like there is missing a scheme in these templates.

Thanks for reporting, @Erikbeeren . This is exactly the type of issue that Matt Dahlhausen is really good at fixing in the OpenStudio standards gem. You should open up an issue for this in the OpenStudio Standards gem and be specific about the error that you get (just like you were here):

And please feel free to CC me on the issue (my Github handle is @chriswmackey). I imagine that I’ll end up running some tests with the latest standards gem and OS 3.1 soon to confirm that the issue still exists there. But this seems like something that is most likely still around in OS 3.1 and we should let Matt know about it sooner than later.

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I am starting to understand how everything is organised. I will post the issue there.
Thank you for all the information.

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I just wanted to say thanks for reporting this issue to Matt, @Erikbeeren . The quick fix he recommended has made it through the Honeybee CI:

So you can get the fix on your end with the “LB Versioner” component now and all of those DOAS templates should simulate correctly.

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Hi @chris,
Thank you. The simulation now runs without any problems.

Hi @chris,

Still two issues on this topic. Two systems do not give any results after simulation:

  1. DOAS with fan coil district chilled water with no heat
  2. DOAS with water source heat pumps fluid cooler with boiler

I do not know for sure if it is a Honeybee or Openstudio issue.

@Erikbeeren ,

Thanks for checking. The first one is a typo on the honeybee end and I just pushed a fix:

You’ll be able to get it on your end with the “LB Versioner” in another hour or so.

The second issue is pretty clearly a bug in openstudio-standards as Matt’s quick fix isn’t addressing the issue. Furthermore, the "DOAS with water source heat pumps fluid cooler with boiler" seems to be a different type of issue than all of the FCU templates because OpenStudio-standards is failing instead of EnergyPlus.

I would open another issue on the standards gem repo and have Matt take a look at it. It appears that this issue was not fixed with his recent commit.

Wait! Nevermind. Matt already fixed the bug with the "DOAS with water source heat pumps fluid cooler with boiler":

I forgot that I actually reported that one to him. Once we upgrade to OpenStudio 3.1, this should be fixed. I am going to start upgrading the compatible version of OpenStudio in the development version over the next week.

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Hi @Chris,

Now I tested all ALL_AIR systems. The systems with an central air source heatpump gave an error which I reported to matthew. The system

PSZ-AC district chilled water with baseboard district hot water

gave no results.

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Hi @chris,

And finaly all Cool and Heat templates. Here all direct evap coolers gave problems (fatal error).
And:

  1. Fan coil district chilled water with boiler
  2. Fan coil district chilled water with no heat

gave no results.
And:

  1. Water source heat pumps fluid cooler with boiler

gave a fatal error:

Solution exception:undefined method `addDemandBranchForComponent’ for false:FalseClass

And:

  1. Water source heat pumps district chilled water with district hot water.

gave the folowing fatal error:

** Severe ** Plant temperatures are getting far too hot, check controls and relative loads and capacities

Wich probably has to do something with this particular simulation/situation, although I am curious what is hapening here and how this plant has been set up.

Matt told me that he had addressed all of the issues with evaporative coolers in OpenStudio 3.1 but I admittedly haven’t tested them yet. I’ll do so soon.

The "PSZ-AC district chilled water with baseboard district hot water" actually isn’t an error on Matt’s end. It’s an issue in the Create Typical Building measure which I used as the basis for the Honeybee HVAC templates. It seems that there’s already a "PSZ-AC district chilled water with district hot water" system template that uses baseboards with district hot water. So the "PSZ-AC district chilled water with baseboard district hot water" is completely redundant and unnecessary. I am going to remove it from the honeybee interface and SDK now. And you can tell Matt that he is off the hook for this one but that someone should update that measure at some point.

The extra unnecessary template has been removed:

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Hi @chris,

I just updated LBT but the HVAC templates somehow are not recognised anymore by the HB HVAC components.
Errors:

  1. Solution exception:System Type “VAV_Chiller_ASHP” is not recognized as an all-air HVAC system.
  2. Solution exception:System Type “DOAS_FCU_Chiller_Boiler” is not recognized as a DOAS HVAC system.

FYI none of the templates are recognised.

@Erikbeeren ,

We just did a big refactor in the way that we identify the HVAC system template (in order to make it work with C# and the Revit/Rhino plugins we have planned). So this issue is likely caused by a mis-match between your components, which look updated to the latest version, and your core Python libraries, which seem to be of the old version on that machine. So just run the “LB Versioner” component again on that machine, restart Rhino, and your file should work.

I had to restart Rhino. Thank you for the explanation.