Meters

Meters track all instances of energy consumption in a model’s Energy Consumers, as well as the resultant carbon production.  Meter results provide a consumption results breakdown which users can customise to be courser than the component output energy reporting and finer than the total Energy Sources consumption variables. For instance, users can assign meters which allowing separate analysis of areas of the building occupied by different tenants. Moreover, meters also show how energy is being used within a model; they always track and report the purpose (Energy End Use) of energy consumption.

In reality, what happens in buildings is you have meters and you have sub-meters and those meters and sub-meters collate either holistically all of the energy uses for that particular fuel OR they sub-meter all of the uses and all of the uses are put together to give an overall outcome.

 

Energy Sources provide energy for Energy Consumers.  The Virtual Environment provides a predefined set of Energy Sources such as Fossil Fuels (e.g. Natural Gas, Coal), Non-Fossil Fuels (e.g. Biogas, Waste Heat) and electrical sources (i.e. Electricity or Grid Supplied Electricity and Grid Displaced Electricity).  In addition to the predefined Energy Sources, the IESVE offers 25 full customisable energy sources.

Energy Sources are typically produced off-site and are consumed on-site to meet consumer energy demands.  The exception to this rule is the Grid Displaced Electricity energy source which represents electricity generated on site.  Grid Displaced Electricity consumption is always negative by convention to indicate energy production and consequently any corresponding carbon production is negative to indicate a carbon emission offset.

 

An Energy Consumer is any model entity within; a plant, equipment or lighting component that consumes energy. A single item of plant may be composed of multiple abstract consumers.  Energy Consumers have the side effect of producing Carbon.

 

Energy Consumers use Energy Sources for a predefined Energy End Use , the production of Carbon Dioxide is just a side effect.  The Virtual Environment provides a comprehensive set of legitimate energy end use categories.

The Virtual Environment typically deduces energy end use from the simulation context, for instance the energy consumed by an electrical motor in a pump is metered under the “Pumps” end use category.

 

This also occurs in situations where the end use category might not seem apparent to a user.  For instance, consider a hot water boiler consume natural gas furnace to server a hot water loop.  The boiler’s total natural gas consumption can divided amongst the two end uses, Space Heating and Service Water Heating using the load ratio.

 

 

In situations where the Virtual Environment cannot deduce the energy end use category from the simulation context an End Use Selection combo box is provided to allow users to select the end use.  For example the pumps in a Spray humidifier may consume energy under the pumps, cooling or process end use categories.

 

Meter Topology & Energy Consumption Analysis

Meter definitions are added and edited in “Energy Sources and Meters” dialog. 

Multiple meters can be defined for each of the Energy Sources in either a flat list or using a tree structure in which sub-meters feed into parent meters. Sub-meters can be created by listing each meter separated by “/”.

 

 

Once a meter is defined, it is available for assignment in the appropriate Energy Consumers dialogs unless it is parent to any additional sub meters.  The Virtual Environment prohibits the direct assignment of Energy Consumers to Meters with sub-meters.

 

Energy consumers can only Each occurrence of simulated energy consumption is logged on a single meter.