1.3.8 Building Energy Balance
Last but not least, the building energy balance charts show the annual total and monthly breakdown of various items related to building heat gain and heat loss.
The charts and the items as specified are created with reference to the Construct Energy Balance component in Honeybee.
The energy balance chart is useful in diagnostic analysis to identify the primary sources of heat gains and heat losses in relation to different building components, such as glazing surfaces and opaque surfaces, and different thermal processes, such as external heat gains through solar radiation, internal heat gains from people, lights and equipment, heat gains/losses due to infiltration, etc.
Caution ! :
- In this dashboard, the energy balance item opaque conduction, i.e. the heat gains/losses related to the opaque building surfaces, is calculated for all the opaque surfaces including both exterior and interior ones, because I haven't found a way to filter the data by surface type in this workflow.
- The opaque conduction item as defined in the Honeybee Construct Energy Balance component considers only the exterior opaque surfaces, i.e. the building envelope surfaces.
- So, pardon me for the inconvenience it may cause and please bear in mind this difference if opaque conduction heat gains/losses are to be investigated.
- This also means that the values for the stored in building item shall be treated with caution because it is calculated as the remainder of the heat gain and heat loss items, i.e. the difference between the sum of all the items with positive values and those with negative values.
- The values reported for the rest of the energy balance items are correct as compared with what is reported from the Honeybee Construct Energy Balance component.
Some relevant previous discussions can also be found in this post on the Ladybug forum: How are the energy balance items calculated?
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