Calibration of an EnergyPlus central cooling plant model with measurements and inter-program comparison

This paper, which is an extension of previous studies, presents the modeling of an existing central cooling plant by using the EnergyPlus program. The previously identified coefficients of the chiller model and additional performance values/curves obtained using measured data are used to develop and calibrate the model. Differences in performance values and curves required by both the EnergyPlus and TRNSYS programs are presented as well as issues related to modeling the central cooling plant in those programs. The EnergyPlus simulation results are compared with measured data and then with the TRNSYS simulation results for a few days in the summer. The results show that it is possible to develop a calibrated model using measurements without modifying by trial-and-error some variables or using stochastic approaches.