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The summary below lists the new features included in this and earlier releases of EnergyPlus (2.2.0, 2.1.0, 2.0.0, previous versions).
Data Sets
- Electronic enthalpy air-side economizer curves
- Microturbine electric generators
Daylighting
- Reference point Illuminance levels calculated by DElight now included in standard output variables.
- DElight reference points now show up on DXF outputs.
Design Day
- Design days now allow scheduled input for Beam and Diffuse Solar values.
- Design days allow users to select periods from weather files to be used in design/sizing calculations.
Input
- Example input files created for all new features (More than 245 example input
files now available). An additional set of realistic, benchmark files (15) have
been added.
Zone Model
- Internal gains can now be entered in intensity:
- People can be entered as number of people, people/floor area or vice versa (area/person).
- Lighting can be entered as total Watts, Watts/floor area or Watts/person.
- Equipment (electric, gas, other) can be entered as Watts, Watts/floor area or Watts/person.
Natural and Mechanical Ventilation
- Outside Air Controller now allows boosted air flow rates for high humidity control. A schedule may also be used to operate the outside air economizer based on a time-of-day schedule. Each of these features is also included in the controller for the stand-alone energy recovery ventilator.
- Infiltration can be entered as total volume, volume/floor area, volume/exterior surface area, or air changes per hour.
- Ventilation, mixing and cross mixing can be entered as total volume, volume/floor area, volume/person, or air changes/hour.
- Airflow network model now includes more coil types, including water cooling, water heating, detailed flat water cooling, multimode DX cooling, and multispeed cooling and heating.
- Multiple infiltration and ventilation objects now allowed in each zone, and the temperature control limits for the ventilation object can now be scheduled (instead of constant).
HVAC
- Dual-setpoint humidistat with deadband now available.
- Water heater volume and capacity can be autosized.
- New desiccant dehumidifier with additional capabilities and flexibility compared to the existing solid desiccant dehumidifier model.
- Supply air fan operating mode (continuous versus cycling) can now be scheduled based on time-of-day for window air conditioner, packaged terminal heat pump and water-to-air heat pump.
- New economizer controls added to Controller:Outside Air and Controller:Stand Alone ERV objects. New controls include Dew Point Temperature limit and Electronic (Variable) Enthalpy limit.
- DX System (DXSystem:Airloop object) now allows cool-reheat dehumidification control type.
On-Site Energy Supply
- New operating scheme for electric generators to follow thermal loads.
- New microturbine electric generator model.
- Upgraded equivalent one-diode PV model to include options for BIPV and inverter.
Environmental Impacts
- Environmental emissions can now be scheduled for all fuel types.
Output
- New detailed reports on Internal Gains (People, Lights, Equipment) as well as Simple Air Flow (Infiltration, Ventilation, Mixing, Cross Mixing) in the .EIO file.
- New report variables for summed zone load components.
- Added additional column in internal heat gains reporting that shows the sum of gains/floor area.
Utilities
- Many enhancements in the IDF Editor and HVAC Diagramming tools.
Documentation and Guides
- Input/Output Reference and Engineering Reference updated and extended for all new features and updates. Total documentation now exceeds 3700 pages.
Data Sets
- Color schemes for DXF (original and default)
Input
- Example input files created for all new features (More than 225 example input files now available).
Geometry/Window/Wall/Shading
- Surface Surround Subsurface error detection more robust (less false errors)
- Autocalculate now allowed for shading surfaces (number of vertices)
Zone Model
- Zone sizing calculations now include heat gains from domestic/service hot water uses and water heaters.
- User now can choose between ASHRAE Clear Sky and Zhang-Huang solar radiation models for use in design day calculations.
Natural and Mechanical Ventilation
- New system availability manager allows system-level control of hybrid ventilation systems.
HVAC
- Water-cooled condenser option added to refrigeration compressor racks for useful heat recovery.
- Chilled and hot-water coils can now be used in the outside air system to preheat or precool outside air.
- New desiccant dehumidifier with additional capabilities and flexibility compared to the existing solid desiccant dehumidifier model.
- Water side economizer (including simulation of integrated and non-integrated water side economizers).
- Water heater improved for indirect heating (e.g. with remote boiler) and autosizable design flow rates for plant connections.
- Packaged terminal air conditioner (PTAC) added to model a fan, DX cooling coil, and a gas, electric, hydronic or steam heating coil serving a single zone.
- Multispeed heat pump with up to four discrete speeds for both cooling and heating.
- Heat losses (and gains) from plant piping.
- New and updated Compact HVAC objects:
- Compact HVAC chilled water coils now use the COIL:WATER:COOLING model by default, COIL:Water:DetailedFlatCooling can be selected as an option.
- Compact HVAC unitary system now supports the draw-thru fan placement option, and allows a schedule for the supply fan operating mode (continuous or cycling).
- New Compact HVAC options for dehumidification and humidification controls for unitary and VAV system types.
- New primary-secondary loop options for Compact HVAC chilled water loops.
- Compact HVAC expanded to support specification of outside air as a combination of flow/person, flow/area and flow/zone.
- Compact HVAC baseboard heat option added for unitary and VAV zones.
- New Compact HVAC objects for unitary heat pump, unitary VAV, packaged terminal air conditioner, and packaged terminal heat pump.
Output
- New tabular reports: surface shadowing, shading, lighting, HVAC sizing, system and component sizing, and outside air.
- New Report:SurfaceColorScheme allow users to select their own colors for building elements in the DXF output.
Utilities
- WeatherConverter now produces KML output (for Google Earth) of latitude, longitude, elevation, and a few climate statistics for locations in a list processing run.
- Add comma delimited form of CLM (ESP-r ASCII files) conversion to WeatherConverter.
- WinEPDraw produces in new default colors.
Documentation and Guides
- Completely rewritten Getting Started manual provides more hands-on example exercises and other information for getting up to speed on EnergyPlus.
- Input/Output Reference and Engineering Reference updated and extended for all new features and updates. Total documentation now exceeds 3500 pages.
Data Sets
- New materials data set based on ASHRAE 2005 HOF replaces legacy DOE-2 and BLAST data.
- Updated solar collector data set from the SRCC adds 55 more collectors for a total of 173.
- Added air change rate to ventilation loads report in StandardReports data set.
Input
- Objects and name lengths can now be 100 characters. (Previous limit was 60).
- New weather data for 86 locations added: 69 in Australia, 16 in Canada, and 1 in Iran.
- Three new unit ventilator input files created: UnitVent5Zone.idf, UnitVent5ZoneAuto.idf, UnitVent5ZoneFixedOANoCoilOpt.idf.
- Three new thermal storage example input files created: IceStorage-Parallel.idf, IceStorage-Series-ChillerDownstream.idf, IceStorage-Series-ChillerUpstream.idf.
- Example input files created for all new features (More than 225 example files now available)
Geometry/Window/Walls/Shading
- Shadowing Calculations object now allows user to specify maximum figures in shadowing overlaps.
- Phase change materials (PCM) with variable thermal conductivity and a temperature-enthalpy function incorporated in conduction finite difference solution algorithm.
- Basement program now outputs EnergyPlus IDF for wall and floor surface temperatures.
- Users can now enter interzone surfaces once and EnergyPlus will automatically create the mirror interzone surface.
Zone Model
- Zone Sizing modified to allow standards-type calculation of design outside air flow rates; allows min cooling and max heating limits on design supply air flow rates.
Natural and Mechanical Ventilation
- Zone forced air units added to reporting of mechanical ventilation rate and loads
- Simple Ventilation object now reports air changes per hour
- New options in UnitVentilator include no coil option and fixed amount for outside air control strategy.
- AirflowNetwork model can now use Zone Exhaust Fan, OnOff supply fan and the DX heating coil objects.
HVAC
- Water-to-air heat pumps now use RegulaFalsi solution technique to improve robustness and to speed up simulation.
- Applicability schedule added to System Availability Manager:Low Temperature Turn Off (to support thermal storage).
- Evaporative condenser option added to existing refrigerated case compressor racks including availability schedule and basin heater with controls.
- Draw-through fan configuration added for furnaces, unitary system and air-to-air heat pumps.
- Different supply air flow rates now allowed for cooling, heating and when no cooling or heating is required in unitary, furnace and air-to-air heat pumps.
- Common Pipe for Primary-Secondary systems provides an alternative to the Connection component object to model Primary-Secondary systems
- Balanced flow desiccant heat exchanger option added for the existing heat exchanger-assisted DX cooling coil object.
- Stratified water heater model added.
- Uniform load distribution option added to plant load range based operation scheme.
- Height-dependent air temperature and wind speed now available for most HVAC systems.
Water Manager
- Green roof simulation added.
On-Site Energy Supply
- Fuel cell model updated.
- Combustion micro cogeneration model added.
Output
- Report Variables and Meter Variables (rdd and mdd) separately reported and output as IDF.
- Meters can now report cumulative value in addition to resetting at reporting time interval.
Utilities
- New EP-Launch utility tab added where users can launch Basement, CalcSoilSurfTemp, CoeffCheck, CoeffConv, Slab and Weather utilities.
- CSVproc now supported in EP-Launch.
- IDF Editor now preserves the order of user IDFs and includes a large number of other new features.
Documentation and Guides
- Input/Output Reference and Engineering Reference updated and extended for all new features and updates. Total documentation now exceeds 3300 pages.
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