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Analysis of Air Conditioning Effectiveness vs. Outdoor Conditions: Traditional Bins or Joint Frequency Bins?
Abstract
There are a number of methods used to
estimate the effectiveness of air conditioning
equipment in handling loads. Full hourly
computer simulations are probably the most
accurate, but lack flexibility and are more
cumbersome to use than more compact
approaches. Alternately, some form of binned
weather data has been used with load and
performance estimation carried out for each of
the bin weather conditions. The most common
binning method puts weather into bins of dry
bulb temperature with mean coincident wet bulb
temperatures.
Mean coincident humidity terms lose the
extreme humidity levels that commonly exist.
This can lead one to assume that conditions will
be held at all times, while in fact the humidity
loads will not be met and discomfort, among
other consequences, will result. Three-dimensional
plots of the joint frequency results
clearly illustrate problem areas.
A better procedure, it will be shown, is to
use a joint frequency bin data set, which puts
hours of occurrence into a matrix with dry bulb
ranges on one axis and humidity ratio ranges on
the second axis. This form of binning is easily
accomplished if a utility like BinMaker is
used to generate the binned data set.
Citation
Cohen, B. M. (1998). Analysis of Air Conditioning Effectiveness vs. Outdoor Conditions: Traditional Bins or Joint Frequency Bins?. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu); Texas A&M University (http://www.tamu.edu). Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /6734.