EnergyPlus provides literally thousands of different output report types and DesignBuilder allows you to access the most useful of these through the main Simulation results screen. Sometimes however is can be useful to access some the other reports and this help topic explains how to go about generating and viewing any EnergyPlus outputs. The process is illustrated through a step by step tutorial at the end.
The first step is to request the extra outputs. Ultimately, this involves adding extra lines of IDF script to the EnergyPlus IDF input file and there are 2 ways to do this:
These 2 methods are described below in more detail.
If you have a licence for the Scripting module then the method below is the easiest way to add extra outputs and ensures that the extra outputs will be generated even if the model is sent to a colleague to simulate.
Note: You can find detailed descriptions on all of the available EnergyPlus outputs from the Input Output Reference document.
If you don’t have access to the Scripting module you can still request extra output reports, but in this case you will need to write the IDF script manually, save it to an IDF file and reference that from the Include IDF Data Advanced setting on the Simulation Calculation Options dialog.
Tip: You can manually generate a list of the available outputs by selecting the RDD/EDD file output option and running a simulation. After the simulation has completed you can view the eplusout.rdd file generated by EnergyPlus in a text editor and copy/paste report names into the IDF file to be included. Note that if you used the Simulation Manager to run the simulation you must load results to DesignBuilder to be able to access the RDD file in the EnergyPlus folder.
The format used by EnergyPlus to define the "reports" (output data) required is described below.
A single "report" can be thought of as a single set of output data or alternatively as a line of data on a graph and is defined using a single line of text using this syntax:
Output:Variable, <Object name>, <Report Name>, <Interval>
For example to generate a new hourly data set for the "Time Heating Setpoint Not Met While Occupied" report for the zone having IDF name "Block1:Zone1" add this line of text to the IDF file:
Output:Variable, Block1:Zone1, Time Heating Setpoint Not Met While Occupied, hourly;
To generate sub-hourly data on the activity of the ideal loads economiser for all zones use:
Output:Variable, *, Ideal Loads Time Economizer Active, timestep;
Note the use of the "*" character to mean all objects and the semi-colon at the end of the line. For further clarification on how to specify requests for EnergyPlus outputs you can refer to the Output:Variable data provided by DesignBuilder in previously generated IDF files.
The above is just one way of obtaining outputs. Once familiar with EnergyPlus reports you can be creative with use of additional IDF to request further outputs.
Regardless of the way you used to generate the extra outputs, the method used to view them is the same, namely through DesignBuilder’s standalone Results Viewer application. If you are using the Simulation Manager you can do this by selecting the simulation(s) of interest and clicking on the View results in DesignBuilder Results Viewer toolbar icon. Otherwise you can use the View EnergyPlus results toolbar icon on the Simulation screen to open the most recently simulated results into the Results Viewer. More details on how to load eso results files into the Results Viewer can be found in the Results Viewer help.
This tutorial provides details on how to view extra outputs for PV panels that are not provided on the standard Simulation results screen. In particular it shows how to generate and view a breakdown of the direct and diffuse solar radiation incident on a PV Panel.
The tutorial assumes that you have access to the Scripting module. If you do not then you can achieve the same results through the Include IDF Data, though in this case the process is a little less convenient.
The screenshot below shows the simple model to be used to illustrate the method in this tutorial. It consists of a 20x10m rectangular block with a single zone and a 5x2m South-facing PV solar collector panel sitting on the roof at an angle of 30° from horizontal. The building is located in London/Gatwick UK.
Surface Outside Face Incident Sky Diffuse Solar Radiation Rate per Area
If all has gone according to plan you will now have generated the extra outputs.