IES-VE User Forum

Hello,

I have a residential building to simulate and I would like to ask if the fact that I have both heating and cooling loads in some months is right. For example I have in August heating plant sensible load 0.2600 Mwh and cooling plant sensible load 0.4076 Mwh. My heating systems' energy consumption in August is 7,6 Mwh and my cooling systems' energy consumption in the same month is 2.6 Mwh.

Thank you in advance.

Hi,

This can happen depending on the conditioning schedules, setpoints and climate conditions. A month such as August can be quite warm during the day but cold at night, there should be ways to conserve heat from the day so it is released at night, try to minimise natural ventilation in late afternoons, don't open windows so much and use materials with a high thermal mass so spaces don't cool rapidly at end of the day and then some of that heat can be released back into space as needed when outside temperatures drop and the solar affects are lost.

I know this is very generic response but really every building and every building model is unique, if the behaviour or results don't match your expectation then it would usually merit some further investigation into the model inputs to check they are appropriate and if so then you can use the simulation tools at your disposal to investigate different strategies and find a design that si most effective at reducing these loads.

Phil