13 - Facility and Building in OpenStudio

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All right. We finished this simulation. We actually ran it, and it took us almost two minutes to finish the simulation. It looks like it worked successfully. We have results and everything. If you go to EnergyPlus results tab, you have all those information that you need to submit your energy consumption figures. If I go back to space types, again here, it takes some time. It's, you can see it's working, here. And, you can see, we have, I think, one or two free floating space types. Should we purge them, let's see. Well, actually not. You can see, you can always purge the unused information by clicking on this purge tool, here, in each and every tab. You can do it in schedules, loads, constructions, everywhere. And, it's always good to remove the unused information, okay.

We worked on this space type, or, resource, here. We created something from scratch. We understood how we can implement it on these spaces. Let's move to the next tab, which is this geometry tab. Click on it. And, you can see, you can still see the geometry, the SketchUp geometry, even here. This is not very user-friendly. You can't do a lot of things, here.  If I want to edit it, I need to upload this floor space JS software. And, for this class, we won't cover it. I mean, when you get used to this tool, the OpenStudio tool, you can actually implement, or actually install this software. Go through the information provided and play around with this. For now, we are going to use this SketchUp interface to make our geometry. Again, you can go to the next tab, which is this facility tab. Now, we are in this building section, okay. The building is sub-tab, you can call it. In this building sub tab, you can rename the building, let's say, San Francisco underscore office high-rise. And, you can also provide some basic information.

You need not to worry about this. This information is only for reporting purpose. Even if you don't provide it, it's all right. If you change the north axis, here, it will also rotate your building as for that, all right. For example, if I make it 90 degrees, my rotation of building changes, okay. In case you don't rotate the building in SketchUp, you can always do it here, in building set time. Or, actually, the building section. In case your building has only one space type, you can just assign the space type, here, all right. And, you need not to worry about assigning at each and every space. But again, this, there are not that many projects where you can assign just one space type to the whole building. Maybe like, something like, warehouse. But, that's very unique. You always want to provide the construction set at building level. That's the most preferred location. You can also default schedule set, that's not preferred.

You can move to these stories. Again, you know how stories work. In case you have multiple floors, multiple sections of your project. When they were constructed in different eras. Let's say, one building was constructed in 1950s and another building block was constructed in 1980s. You can assign different construction sets, here. Maybe same thing for schedules. Maybe the buildings have exactly the same construction, but they have different schedule sets. One works from 9:00 to 5:00 and another block works for during night time. Let's say from 6 p.m. to early morning, 6 a.m., all right.

Shadings, all those shading devices that we created in SketchUp. If you remember, I actually explained to you, you can provide some kind of transmittance schedule. Let's say, from during the month of fall, the leaves, they, they fall to 50% of total foliage from, let's say, September to December. And then, there's no leaf on the tree from January to March. And then, they go to 50% foliage again, from March to June. And, 100% from June to August. You can create this kind of transmittance schedule. It's going to be a fractional schedule. You can provide some construction, as well. Let's say, one of the shading device is just a wall, a simple wooden wall. You want to provide some construction. Let's do that.

Well, this construction set won't make any impact on, on the, on the heating or cooling consumption. Or, let's say, total energy consumption. Well, actually, it can do on the, it can actually make some impact on heating and cooling. For example, that adjacent building has one shaded, one like, tall wall, which is made of glass. And, it's making some shadow impact on your building. If you provide construction set of something transparent, then it can definitely make some impact on your day lighting controls. And even on total energy for heating and cooling, all right. The most important thing that I want to explain here is, exterior equipment. Also, one more important thing. You can't create these shading devices in OpenStudio interface. You need to use it either something like, a grasshopper. You can use honeybee and ladybug tools, or grasshopper. You can create the geometry there, as well. For now, for our workflow, you can just create it in SketchUp, and move it here. Well, you can still delete it, here. But like, you know, that, that's not what we want to do here, okay.

Go to exterior equipment. And, that's where you provide something like, exterior lights. Those exterior lights won't make any impact on thermodynamics in your space. In your actually space, there won't be any heating and cooling impact, that's I meant, okay. If I create something like, exterior light, they are always exterior. They're always outside the building. Let's say, these are exterior LED lights, okay. And when you click on this exterior light definition, rename it LED definition of, let's say, 500 watts. That's the total peak design level. Well, if it's exterior light and it's based on the night versus day hours, you can either provide something like, astronomical clock. It means it will always follow the hours, hour of patent for Sun versus night time. Or, you can create your own schedule. Just change control option to schedule only. And, from either, from my model, you can bring some existing schedule. Or, you can create something new here, in this schedule tab, and bring it, here. For now, I'm going to use some existing schedule.

Let's say, this medium office building occupancy. The exterior lighting will also follow this schedule, which is like, I know, absurd. Because, occupancy is during daytime and the exterior lighting works at nighttime. But, you got the idea, what I mean, all right. You can change the end use direct subcategory, to exterior light. And, when you see the final report, you will have a new category there, just for this exterior light, okay. Save the model. And, run the simulation, okay. I want to like, finish this simulation in front of you guys, so that I can show you that new subcategory, which we created just now, okay. Again, like, it's a very simple calculation. If you follow something like, astronomical clock, the daytime hours will be exactly equal to nighttime hours. This exterior light will work on night hours, which means, divide 8760 hours by 2. That's the number of hours for which the exterior lighting will work, okay. It's very easy, it's 50% of total hours available in a year.

I'm going to save this model, as well. And, let me just check my notes, if I have forgot something. And, that's it, the run finished. We can click on this result. Somebody go to EnergyPlus results, scroll down. And, you can see there is a new subcategory, here, exterior light. And, there's total energy consumption for that. It means, whatever changes we did recently, they worked, okay. You can save the model, and go back to this facility tab, again. It's taking some time. This is a lot of information now in our energy model. In this exterior equipment, you can create more objects, add a new object. In case, let's say, if you have some pumps, or a fan which is working outside your building, you can also bring it, here. You can just create a new subcategory. I mean, they're different ways to use it. You just need not to create the exterior light always. A lot of times, I use this method because it's the easiest method to create those exterior objects, okay. I'm going to save this model as version 11 underscore facility and hit save.