Frequently Asked Questions

Starting in EnergyPro 9.0 you will find three TDV scores when doing a compliance calculation.  A TDVe score which represents the efficiency of the building design and includes all end uses with the exception of PV and Battery.  A TDVt score which is the building efficiency score including the savings contribution of PV and Batteries, and a Sourcet score, a Source emissions score that is similar to the TDVt score and includes all end uses and factors in the Green House Gas emissions that result from the gas and electricity that is consumed to run the building.  In the case of buildings with gas appliances, you can expect your proposed Sourcet emissions score to be high.  For the 2022 Energy Code, New Construction projects are required to comply with all three scores.

Here are some examples of errors and the causes.

2016-May-12 14:13:45 –  3: Temperature (low) out of bounds for zone=13-PARKING GARAGE -LV 2 for surface=RAISED FLOOR542

In this example, the zone has not been modeled properly.  You may have taken some shortcuts on inputting the surfaces and don’t have a complete description of the zone.  While we ask for 3 surfaces minimum, it is important that those three surfaces comprise a significant area of the zone.

2016-May-12 14:13:45 – 23: Surfaces in Zone=”10-PARKING GARAGE -P2″ do not define an enclosure.
 Number of surfaces <= 3, view factors are set to force reciprocity.

Similar to the above warning, this space has incomplete geometry.  Possibly adding a 4th surface will satisfy this condition.

2016-May-12 14:13:45 –  15: GetSurfaceData: The total number of floors, walls, roofs and internal mass surfaces in Zone 15-LOBBY / RESTROOM
 is < 6. This may cause an inaccurate zone heat balance calculation.

While rare, you may have circumstances where you need to define up to 6 surfaces to satisfy the CBECC simulation.

This is caused by the fact that you have too many Unmet Load Hours.  You should read the Unmet Load Hours topic on how to correct this issue, then re-issue the report.

If the report shows “Building Does Not Comply” then your energy usage is too high and it does not meet code.

The CEC enforces the ACM requirement that Unmet Load Hours cannot exceed 150 in any given zone.  Start by reviewing the NRCC-PRF-01 report, towards the beginning is Table C9. Unmet Load Hours.  You will see a listing of zones that have this issue.

Unmet Load Hours that are reported basically indicate how many hours the Zone will be outside of the thermostat setpoint.  You cannot adjust that setpoint, Title 24 restricts the input.  There are a number of causes for this message, but the net result is the zone either has inadequate heating, inadequate cooling, or insufficient airflow to maintain comfort conditions in the space, as reported by the CBECC engine.  The CEC also offers the following guidance:

http://bees.archenergy.com/faq_hvac.html

In EnergyPro, at the Zone level of the Building Tree, Mechanical Tab, we do offer a checkbox Add Cooling which will add cooling in the background to meet unmet cooling load hours.  Note this checkbox will not impact the reporting, in other words, any extra cooling systems will not appear on your reports.

It may be that the HVAC system is undersized.  That could include too little capacity on the heating side, the cooling side or possibly insufficient airflow.  In some cases, you may not even have heating or cooling as part of the system.

When dealing with more sophisticated systems such as Variable Air Volume, be sure the airflow at the Zone level of the Tree, Mechanical tab are sufficient, and that the VAV Terminal boxes all have sufficient heating coils.

Note that while this requirement must be met to remove any watermarking on the Certificate of Compliance, it does not mean you must re-design your HVAC system.  Only that it be modeled such that the load hours are met.  That may in fact mean modeling your system with “increased” numbers that don’t really exist, so be sure to include a note in the Remarks section to document these numbers.

Please do not send in your file with a request that we diagnose this issue, it is not something that we can provide as a normal support service.  One route you may wish to consider would be submitting Prescriptive Mechanical documentation instead, since that approach does not have this requirement.

You probably have a ductless system and have specified the ventilation at the Zone level of the Tree, Mechanical tab as coming from the HVAC system, but that type of system cannot provide ventilation.  The typical error appears as:

“thermalzone ‘x’ has ‘forced’ ventilation, but the ventilationsystem for the thermalzone ‘x’ is not defined.”

At the Zone level of the tree, Mechanical tab, change the ventilation over to another choice (but not natural ventilation if it is a commercial occupancy)

When modeling cooling towers, it is very important that you input the tower parameters accurately since the CBECC simulation is very sensitive to these inputs.  A message such as this may appear in the LOG file.

2016-Dec-05 19:19:43 –        1: Autosizing of cooling tower UA failed for tower XXXX
2016-Dec-05 19:19:43 –     EnergyPlus Severe Error(s) (1):
2016-Dec-05 19:19:43 –        1: Bad starting values for UA

Review the following parameters on the cooling tower for accuracy as it relates to the load served by the tower.

Tower Tonnage (In the case of a chiller, this generally should be about 20% more than the chiller tonnage)

Tower Setpoint (we suggest 80 degrees)

Tower Fan Airflow (we suggest 200 cfm/ton)

Condenser Water Flow Rate (It is very important this is consistent with the tower tonnage, very low or very high gpm/ton flows here cause problems, so typically 3 gpm/ton)

Careful and accurate input of these parameters will ensure a successful simulation of the tower.

One cause of this is the Visible Transmittance (VT) of the windows in the building, which affects the amount of daylighting provided and this affects how effective the daylighting controls will be in their ability to reduce the electric lighting usage.  The CEC CBECC engine accounts for this by modifying the energy usage of the Standard building in response to the VT of your window selections.  Please review the Prescriptive Envelope criteria for window VT to see what the budget building is using as the reference VT.

A second cause is you have large spaces subject to daylighting provided via skylights and windows as outlined in Section 140.3 of the code.  This section calls for daylighting openings to be provided in a space and your lack of those daylighting openings results in more electric lighting usage than the Standard building.

You are probably seeing a message such as:

 “airsystem ‘xyz” has fan control = ‘cycling’, but this system is defined to provide ‘forced’ ventilation for control zone ‘zone A’ evaluating rule: set checkcode airsys:fanctrl (75:’hvacsecondary-systemcontrols.rule line 330)

This is a message from the CEC CBECC side and basically indicates you have a Zone in which the HVAC system will be providing the ventilation.  However, in the Central System Library, at the Controls Tab, you have indicated the fans do not run continuously.

The fans must run continuously to provide ventilation if the ventilation comes from the HVAC system.  You should change this setting to Continuous.

Note that the ventilation setting is done at the Zone level of the tree, Mechanical tab.  In Hghrise Residential/ Hotel Motel occupancies it is acceptable to use Natural Ventilation and thus this could be set to “Natural”, with the fans set to “Intermittent” but not in commercial occupancies.

In the assembly editor, you will add Exterior Insulation to your wall assembly.  If the project is Nonresidential Performance, this will be done in the Layers tab by clicking on the Yellow Plus sign to add a layer.  Double click on the layer and select an insulation material from the material list, then move it so it is on the exterior of the wall framing.

If the type of project is Prescriptive, then edit the JA4 tab and simply type in the R-Value of the insulation in the Exterior Insulation entry.  If the project is a Residential Title 24 Performance project, enter the Exterior Insulation on the Res T24 Performance tab.

For residential projects starting in the 2022 code, the standard water heater is either a NEEA Heat Pump or gas fired tank-less water heater in both the Prescriptive and Performance compliance approaches so using any gas fired unit with a tank, and especially an electric water heater will produce a significant penalty.

For commercial projects, the standard water heater under Performance is also a gas water heater.  However, under Prescriptive, you are allowed to use an electric water heater.  Our recommendation is to submit the DHW using the NRCC-PLB-01 form which is available under the NR T24 Prescriptive forms list.

Under the Calculation Options, bottom left button, click and you will see the NR T24 Performance calculations in the list above.  Select this, then on the right unclick DHW from the scope and then rerun and the penalty will be gone.

In order to guarantee a unique name for each element in the tree (which is a requirement of the CBECC-Com engine), we add a numeric after the name to ensure uniqueness.  You cannot remove the number, it is needed since every item must have a unique name, which can get very burdensome since this would mandate each individual window/wall etc. be given a unique name as you are doing your inputs.

Typically the error will read something like this:

Error:  Construction assembly ‘CONC. WALL7’ may not be assigned to surfaces with more than one Status, i.e. New, Altered or Existing

A limitation of the CEC CBECC engine is that any assemblies or windows in the Building Tree that have a different Status (ie Existing/New/Altered) may not point to the same Assembly or Fenestration entry in the library.

The solution is to create a unique entry for each case, for example create a wall named (e) CONC. WALL that would be assigned to the surfaces that are existing, create another called (n) CONC. WALL for the new instances.

The calculation engines in EnergyPro that are now used for Title 24 code compliance are developed and maintained by the California Energy Commission. The new Residential and Nonresidential calculation engines they provide are significantly slower than the prior ResSim and DOE-2 engines we provided in older versions of EnergyPro. The new engines incorporate CSE and EnergyPlus, which are more powerful than the older calculations, and simulate the zones much more thoroughly, resulting in longer simulation runtimes.

Try to keep the number of zones in your model to an absolute minimum, but it is not unusual to see run times of over an hour on more complex models.

To speed up run times, you can select the Quick Analysis option, which will run a partial year simulation.  In the bottom left, click on the Calculations.  In the list that appears above, select either Res T24 Performance or NR T24 Performance.  On the right will appear the option for Quick Analysis.  This will cut your runtime in half.  However that option will trigger a report that includes a watermark that states “Not useable for compliance” since you must run the full year for code compliance.

Another option is to check the box for “Do Not Generate PRF01/CF1R”  This will skip the report generation feature that occurs at the end and can save additional time, but you will not get the Title 24 reports needed for permitting.

The CEC has a default chiller operating assumption that is always used for the standard building.  Basically, multiple chillers are sized equally and sequenced on incrementally as the load increases.  The inputs that you use to sequence your chiller operation will not affect the standard building.

For Nonresidential buildings, the Standard (Budget) building will typically have a Variable Air Volume (VAV) system anytime the building being modeled is greater than 25,000 sqft, more than two stories, or has a cooling capacity > 65,000 Btuh. Your proposed design is likely a Constant Volume system, and thus is going to have significantly higher fan power usage than the Standard building. We have been recommending you choose prescriptive compliance when you have high fan power.

For Multifamily buildings, the Standard building will have fans that run intermittently instead of a continuous running fan for the dwellings and guest rooms.  Check your input at the Central System, Controls tab to see what setting you have for the fan operation and consider if using Zone Ventilation fans (Zone level of the tree, Mechanical Tab) will be possible.

In both cases, review your inputs for the fan BHP to be sure this number is not excessive.  Please also understand that the fan power used in the Performance modeling for the budget does not necessarily align with what is required for Prescriptive, so many times your fan will comply under Prescriptive and not Performance.  If so, take that route.  For VAV systems, review the airflows you have input at the Zone level of the tree, Mechanical tab as well as the VAV turndown ratio indicated on the VAV terminal boxes.

EnergyPro offers three possible scenarios here for modeling this type of device as follows:

Nonresidential Calculations that use ducted HVAC systems in EnergyPro that are not Zonal (FPFC, PTAC, WSHP, VRF) have Exhaust Air Heat Recovery ERV or Heat Recovery Ventilator HRV as an option on the HVAC system.  See the Outside Air tab in the Central System Library for these input options.

Residential buildings have the option also.  Start by going to the Top level of the Building Tree, Misc tab and specifying a non-default IAQ fan.  Now at the Zone level of the Building Tree, Dwelling Units tab you can configure the IAQ fan as a balanced ventilation system with the option of specifying the heat recovery efficiency.

Section 120.1(b) of the code dictates the minimum amount of outside air that must be provided based upon the CBC occupancy type of the space.  This is a known quantity based upon your Zone Occupancy selection from the CBC, and as a result you cannot go below this minimum.  ASHRAE 62.1 is not a consideration in the California Energy Code.  Changing the occupant density and the cfm/occupant at the Room level of the Tree, Occupant tab will have no impact, since the values taken from 120.1(b) are hardwired into the CEC CBECC engine.  The only change you can make is to increase the outside air above the minimum, this is done by going into the Room level of the Building Tree, Occupant tab, and increasing the Occupant Fraction above the default of 0.5 (50%) (taken from 120.1(b)) to a higher number.

Your other choice is to use a fixed number of occupants in the space.

Note that changes to the ventilation numbers will impact your load calculations, since you are free to input any values you wish for these calculations.

Starting in version 6.5 of EnergyPro, we now have a new layer by layer editor incorporated into the Assembly library. Note that the only way to define an assembly for the NR Performance calculations is using the layered approach. Note also that these layers do not affect any other calculations, just Nonresidential performance modeling. Also, any entries made on the JA4 tab of the editor (rigid insulation, etc) will not be seen in the Nonresidential performance simulation, so If you need to add rigid insulation you will have to add a layer into the Layers tab.

Please be aware that older assemblies from prior versions will have a minimum set of layers built into the assembly, so it is very important that you review these layers before you proceed with your analysis.

The list of materials published in EnergyPro is the only list that the CEC permits in the simulation. While the CEC may decide to add additional materials in a later release, for now you must work with that list. The CEC will permit you to build layers to represent a particular material.

You will need to edit the assembly layers to meet the code minimum u-factors dictated by the Title 24 code. See the topic “How do I create an assembly for the new NR T24 Performance calculation?” for details.

Because the PRF-01 and CF-1R reports are created through an online based report generator on the CEC website, you will have to have an Internet connection in order to generate any Certificates of Compliance. Assuming you have Internet, you might check with your IT department to see if your system blocks the report generator from being accessed. You also have the option of turning off the reports, this option is found by clicking on the bottom left “Calculations” and then in the list above selecting the appropriate calculation.  The display on the right will show the option to turn off the reports. You will eventually have to uncheck tis option and rerun the calculations to get the final Certificate of Compliance.

The CEC provides a number of FAQs related to the CBECC Com engine used by EnergyPro at the following link.

http://bees.archenergy.com/faq.html

If you select the Calculation option on the bottom left side of the screen, then select the T24 Performance calculation (either Res or NR) in the list that appears above this selection, you will see an option to “View CBECC Log”. If you click on this button, you will see the CEC log file reporting the results of the simulation. Note that this file will not exist unless you first uncheck the option for “Delete Temporary Files”, then click on calculate to run the simulation. At the end of the simulation you can view this log file and see what problems you have.