Hi, I use LB V.1.4 but I can’t find"Renewables" components when I want to model Photovoltaic panels …what is the proplem?
Sorry, but Does this mean that these renewables components have not yet been added to LB plug in v 1.4? if it is true I want to know the latest version that I can download and this component is available in? Thank you
Yes, they’re not in the LBT plugin, though there are similar ways of trying to run those types of renewables studies in LBT. Can I ask what specifically you are trying to model? Is it just estimating the electricity that you would get from PV panels?
Yes exactly, I want to model PV panels and get Power output
Can I ask you what kind of similar method is that?
Is a similar way of estimating the amount of irradiation on the surface?
I hope that the same simulation can be realized in LBT as soon as possible, such as PV simulation performed in the idf file.
Wish you please help me Mr Chris
The Annual Irradaince recipe in the LBT plugin is going to give you the most accurate simulation of hourly solar irradiance out of anything that’s currently offered across legacy or LBT. So that’s what I recommend using if you need high-accuracy hour-by-hour irradiance values to estimate energy harvested by PV. You’d still have to multiply the results by the efficiency of the solar cell and the other factors that account for PV cell temperature, dirt, snow, etc. But the starting irradiance will be more accurate than anything you had in legacy.
I know that the hourly PV cell temperature calculation is particularly tough to do just with native GH components so I’ll try to add a dedicated component that does that at some point. We’ll also eventually add the ability to specify PV in Honeybee EnergyPlus simulations since I know people often want to compare energy harvested with energy consumption in the same simulation. But, for now, that “Annual Irradiance” simulation is the best way to get the irradiance.
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I can now provide a better answer to this question than I did 2 years ago because I just finished exposing EnergyPlus’s implementation of PVWatts in the latest development version of the LBT plugin. Unlike my previous suggestion, which involves several rough factors to estimate electricity from solar irradiance, my new suggestion does a pretty detailed accounting of all factors that typically affect PV performance, including the temperature of the solar cells and losses at the inverter that converts DC to AC power.
Here is a sample file for the new PV workflow
Bear in mind that the sample will only work after running the LB Versioner component to get the latest development version of the plugin.
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Hi @chris , thanks for the greate work. It’s is possible to simulate a sort of storage with a formula or component? I want to estimate the possibility of storing energy in the batteries (kWh) and use for the consumption of the building.
Hi @domenico ,
Not at the moment but I was planning to add a module and a component for battery storage since EnergyPlus supports this and I know it’s a common thing people want to simulate and understand.
Could you confirm that the model used by the EnergyPlus ElectricLoadCenter:Storage:Simple object would be sufficient to account for everything that you want to model about your battery? I would ideally like to avoid implementing the whole object that E+ has for lead acid batteries or the object E+ has for lithium ion batteries right now because they are really complex and I sense that most people typically don’t know all of the inputs they need for these complex models in early stages of design. Still, I understand if the simple storage battery model isn’t good enough to get meaningful results. It’s just going to mean that it takes me longer to get the components together.
Let me know which battery storage model you’re going to need and I’ll add it to my agenda after a few other things I’m working on.
Ok thanks, I will try with EnergyPlus ElectricLoadCenter:Storage:Simple first. How can I add lines directly in Energy Plus from Honeybee? or I have to open EP and add there?
You can add them with the add_str_ input to the Model To OSM component.
Granted, you can only add objects this way so I think you may also need to edit the IDF a little in this case.