Solar Panels on the roof

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I've skimmed through the DD Wizard in eQUEST and haven't noticed anything along these lines, but I thought maybe someone here would have experience with this.

Is there a way of inputting any level of solar panel information into eQUEST through the wizard, or would this all be handled lower in the detailed data edit mode?

-- Jon

Jonathan Bowser

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Hi Jon!

It's all later, in detailed.

NICK CATON, E.I.T.

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To the rescue again, Nick!

Thanks for the quick response.

Jonathan Bowser

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Looking at this from another angle... is there a report that would provide the solar energy incident to a face on the building? The thought being if we know the solar energy hitting part of the building, we could run that through some set of calculations to conceptually estimate the amount of energy that would be generated by the solar panels?

Jonathan Bowser

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So in doing a little more reading on the available reports, it looks like the LS-L report provides the solar radiation that passes through the glazing for every space. This wouldn't necessarily give the solar radiation that the entire wall was exposed to, but what if you were to do something along the lines of creating a piece of glazing with the least energy efficient properties possible and cover the entirety of every wall on a shell with that glazed material?

With that type of model, would the results in the LS-L report provide a somewhat "accurate" representation of the solar radiation the wall is being exposed to? If so, would it not then be plausible to use those numbers, in conjunction with the properties of a given set of solar panels, to conceptually estimate the energy created by the panels?

I'm just trying to think outside the box here!

Jonathan Bowser

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Jon,

There are a number of tools available to estimate solar PV production.
Since most of my projects are in New York, I have been using NYSERDA's
Clean Power Estimator for ballpark numbers:
http://nyserda.cleanpowerestimator.com/nyserda.htm

You could also look into PV Watts and RETScreen. Search the equest-users
and bldg-sim archives for more suggestions.

In eQUEST, if you want to know the solar radiation on a wall, create a
custom Hourly Report Block. The Variable Type will be Exterior Wall.
There are several hourly results that are solar-related to choose from.
You probably want "Total solar rad on wall after shading (Btu/Hr-Ft2)".

Regards,
Bill

William Bishop, PE, BEMP, LEED(r) AP

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You could get the hourly report for solar radiation on each surface.
-Rohini

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I've skimmed through the DD Wizard in eQUEST and haven't noticed anything along these lines, but I thought maybe someone here would have experience with solar panels manufactured in solar panels factory.

Is there a way of inputting any level of solar panel information into eQUEST through the wizard, or would this all be handled lower in the detailed data edit mode?

-- Jon

Jonathan Bowser

Just got the kind of information I have been searching for..Glad to find such an informative post..

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