Determine peak power requirement?

[boatingcow]

I apologise in advance if this question has been raised before!

I am currently evaluating ArchiCAD 16 for a new job, having used ArchiCAD 13 in a previous job until now. I am particularly interested in the energy analysis software and I wonder if it is possible to determine a peak power requirement alongside the published annual energy demand for a design?

The peak load would be useful to size the equipment required (woodchip boiler, ground source heat, etc). I have had a look at the PDF and spreadsheet output, and although I'm sure that internally the software must work out an hourly power requirement and integrate it over the year, I am unsure as to how to visualise the power requirement curve or just extract a peak figure it possible?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

The energy evaluation tool - EcoDesigner - has not been validated according to any norm (ASHRAE or EN), so it can be used to have an idea of how the building is going to work, but that's it. This means that its results cannot be used in any official documentation/ calculation etc.

If I remember correctly, in a previous discussion on the topic (http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=40154) EcoDesigner developer Miklos Sved stated that "EcoDesigner does the job". Whether it does or doesn't, it is not validated and you cannot use its result (at least, here in Italy).

In the same discussion I mentioned above, it was announced a new product called EcoDesigner Star, to be released before the end of 2012 and to be validated according to ASHRAE and to EN 15265. Unfortunately, I have not heard anything about it in the last two months.

[boatingcow]

Thanks Enrico - the Star product looks interesting!

As for EcoDesigner, we are only looking for 'conceptual evaluation' at this stage, so we don't mind if the software isn't fully validated, but it would be great if we could determine roughly what size boiler/etc we should install, then we can consider the full building systems design at an early stage.

Thanks!