[Bldg-sim] Modelling diversity in single zone apartments

[Patrick Bivona]

Hi all,

I'm modelling a mixed office/residential tower building with 160 apartments
in tropical climate, for LEED. The apartments are centrally cooled with fan
coil units, in the living room and bedrooms. The design team sized the
chiller with a diversity of 0.5, probably assuming that when the occupants
are in the living room, they're not cooling the bedrooms or something of
the sort.

Given the number of apartments, I modelled each apartment as a single
block. I cannot use zone multipliers because of the specific geometry of
the building. I have one combined FCU for each apartment, which is of
course either on or off. I'm also grouping apartments based on orientation,
but that's beside the point.

My question is about an approach to modelling the diversity of use of FCUs
in the apartments. With my modelling simplification, I cannot model the
diversity of cooling within an apartment. So what would be an acceptable
approach?

I can only think of turning cooling off in half of the apartments, though
apartments with cooling turned off are occupied and have internal loads.
Would a LEED reviewer be ok with such an approach. Or is there a better way?

Thanks,
Patrick
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