Hello eQuest Community,

I'm modeling a ~40,000 SF office served via two packaged VAV with DX cooling and electric heating RTUs. As it is a high aspect ratio building, nearly every zone also has an electric, ceiling mounted radiant panel. As eQuest cannot model a zone with both radiant panels and a VAV system, I've attempted to approximate the contribution of these radiant panels with electric baseboard heat.

As I've been calibrating the model, I've nearly approach the building energy consumption levels and the model has a good match to the annual consumption profile. However, when I review the detailed simulation output, I find that the baseboard are responsible for 90% of the building heat load while the VAV system picks up the remaining 10%. Based on my visits to the building, this does not feel intuitively likely. However, eQuest seems to prioritize baseboard over the forced air system, despite my attempts to placate it with higher discharge air temperatures and experiments with baseboard control schedules. As the proposed retrofit is a heat pump, the model as is suggests there is very little room for improvement as only 10% of the heat is supplied by the ventilation system, which doesn't bode well.

Does anyone have a better approach? The only other thought I had is to simulate the heat output of the baseboard with a parallel box zone heater with near 0 fan power consumption.

Many thanks,

Bryan