Schedules

Overview

Schedules control all time-dependent quantities of the building simulation: occupancy, equipment loads, heating and cooling setpoints, ventilation rates. VICUS Buildings knows two schedule types: periodic schedules, which are built from daily cycles for the days of the week, and continuous annual schedules from a time series (e.g. measurement data). Schedules are referenced by the usage submodels.

Access

Databases > Schedules… opens the “Schedule database”. When creating a new schedule, a dialog appears first with the fields:

• Name
• Type of the schedule: “periodic (schemes based on daily cycles)” or “continuous (e.g. measurement data)”
• Interpolation method: “linear” or “constant”

The chosen type determines which of the two tabs of the editor is used: Daily cycles (periodic) or Annual schedules (continuous).

Periodic schedules (tab “Daily cycles”)

Periods

A periodic schedule consists of one or more periods (e.g. heating period and summer). Each period has a start date and a name:

• + creates a new period; the start date is requested in the format dd.MM. (“Enter start date (dd.MM.):”). Only one period may exist per start day (“A period with this start day already exists.”).
• copy duplicates the selected period.
• - removes the selected period.
• A double-click on the start date opens “Change start date of the period”.

Daily cycles and days of the week

Within a period, one or more daily cycles define the daily profile. Each daily cycle is assigned to the days of the week Monday to Sunday; the day-of-week table shows in color which day belongs to which cycle. Each day of the week must be assigned to exactly one daily cycle - missing or doubly assigned days make the schedule invalid (“The schedule interval … is missing entries for one or more days of the week.” resp. ”… has conflicting entries for the same day of the week.”).

There are no special days/holidays: schedules are defined exclusively via the seven days of the week Monday-Sunday.

24-h value table

The daily profile is entered hourly in a table with the columns Time and Value (rows “00:00 - 01:00” to “23:00 - 24:00”). Several cells can be set together: select cells and then type the value. Only numbers are permitted.

Interpolation

The option Interpolation applies to the entire schedule:

• Constant: each hourly value applies piecewise constant for its hour interval (typical for switching schedules and setpoints)
• linear: between the support points the value is interpolated linearly (continuous profiles)

Preview

The chart tabs Weekly and Annual show the resulting profile of the currently selected period over a week, resp. of the entire schedule over the year - so period changes and week structure can be checked directly.

Annual schedules (tab “Annual schedules”)

Continuous schedules store a time series over the year. Here too, linear or Constant interpolation is chosen. Two data sources are available:

Copied data (clipboard)

• Copy header for import places a two-column template on the clipboard (columns Time [h] and Signal [---], support points at 0 and 8760 h). This can be filled with data in a spreadsheet application and copied back (“Header copied. You can now paste it in Excel, add your data and copy it back.”).
• Paste from clipboard takes a two-column table with a header row including units. Exactly two data columns are expected, a time unit in the first column and valid header data - otherwise an error message appears (“Schedule data cannot be pasted”).

From TSV file

Alternatively, the schedule references an external data file (“Time series data files (*.tsv *.csv)”):

• Data file selects the file; the field Reference shows the stored path.
• Edit… opens the file in the text editor (only if it exists).
• If the file contains several data columns, the list Select column in data file appears, from which the desired quantity is chosen.
• The column headers must contain units, otherwise the import reports “Invalid/missing unit in the column header of the data file.”

Related topics

• Database Concept
• Usage Submodels
• Structure of Usage Profiles