The electric convector is controlled to meet any remaining zone load not met by any other item of equipment in the zone that has a higher heating priority. The control is accomplished by taking the remaining zone load and dividing by the efficiency of the baseboard.
The HVAC Zone Equipment Tutorial contains a description of how to use the Electric convector system
This is a read-only label that is automatically generated by the software and which incorporates the name of the zone in which the convector is located.
There are 3 ways to define the heating capacity of the unit as selected from the following list of options:
This autosizable field defines the convective electric nominal heating capacity (in W or Btu/h). It is only available when the Heating design capacity method is set to 1-Design capacity.
Enter the heating capacity per unit floor area (in W/m2 or W/ft2) of the unit. This data is only available when the Heating design capacity method is 2-Capacity per floor area.
The program calculates the heating capacity from floor area of the zone served by the unit and the heating capacity per unit floor area value specified here.
Enter the heating capacity as a fraction of the autosized heating capacity for convective electric baseboard unit. This data is only available when the Heating design capacity method is 3-Fraction of autosized capacity. EnergyPlus calculates the heating capacity from the design autosized heating capacity and this fraction. The default value is 1.0.
This is the overall electrical efficiency of the convector. The zone load met by this unit is divided by the electrical efficiency to obtain the total electric energy used.
This is the schedule that determines whether or not the component is available for each timestep of the simulation. A schedule value greater than 0 (usually 1 is used) indicates that the unit can be on during the timestep. A value less than or equal to 0 (usually 0 is used) denotes that the unit must be off for the timestep.