I tried to define a translucent panel in EnergyPlus by setting the solar diffusing field in WindowMaterial:Glazing object. I just realized that Honeybee deletes all fields after the conductivity field in WindowMaterial:Glazing object of EnergyPlus. Even if I define a glazing material with solar diffusing field set to “Yes”, the exported IDF does not contain this field. I have tried to feed the material definition through different Honeybee objects, but the resulted IDF file is the same: no solar diffusing field.
My conclusion: It appears that Honeybee deletes all fields after the conductivity field in WindowMaterial:Glazing object.
Furthermore, I tried to manually change the glazing object in the IDF file so that the glazing material contains the solar diffusing field set to “Yes”. And then manually run this file outside Honeybee (i.e. with EPLaunch).
I then read the resulted CSV file (from the manually changed IDF file) to Honeybee to do the comfort analysis. The resulted MRT and other comfort parameters contour contains a splotch consistent with the direct solar component from the glazing.
My conclusion is: the comfort calculation in Honeybee disregards the solar diffusing property of the glazing.
Are my conclusions correct?