No change in electricity production after changing generator rated electricity power output?

I am trying to model electricity generation produced by PV panels on a building but noticed that if I change the generator rated electricity power output I am still producing the same amount of energy. I tried to compare this with the generatorPV example file given in EnergyPlus but when I change the generator rated electricity power output values in the example file, it also does not change the power production output. Does anyone know why this occurs and if there is a way to fix this? Change in the generator rated electricity power output should change the power production output at the end of a simulation.

I assume, that you refer to the ElectricLoadCenter:Generators object. As it says in the Input Output Reference:

"This value [Generator Rated Electric Power Output] is used only for supervisory control and generator dispatch; the actual power output for each time step is determined by the generator models."

So the power output comes from the PV models. I think, this value is only needed for something like: how much generated electric power should the Electric Load Center "expect" from the PV models, to manage storage and other things. If your setup is relatively simple, e.g. you have only one generator object, no storage, the value of Rated Electric Power Output may have no effect on your results. Just set it to the sum rated power of your PV system.

749

adambgnr

answered 2017-03-12 08:12:02 -0500

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Yes, this is correct. PV panels are assumed to just run whereas other generators that consume fuel to make electricity can attempt to respond to dispatch controls.

Archmage (2017-03-15 08:10:19 -0500) edit

@adambgnr , @Archmage Does this mean that in order to change the PV output (in the GeneratoswithPV.idf example file) I would need to substitute the PhotovoltaicPerformance:Simple object with an object from the SandiaPVdata.idf which is located in C:\EnergyPlusV8-6-0\DataSets?