I have read from several sources that in Energyplus a way to switch off the cooling is to set the cooling thermostat setpoint at a very high value.
I used this trick in order to simulate the DOE's small office prototype for 3 winter months with the HVAC in heating only mode, with heating setpoint changing randomly between one very high, (heating should be at full power) and one very low (heating should be completely off). In order to do so, I used E+ together with BCVTB and MATLAB.
However, in the csv output I see that the cooling is still active quite often, and it seems to be turned on during daylight when the heating setpoint is set at its lowest value. In other words, it is like the cooling is pushing the zones temperature towards the lowest heating setpoint. (I am measuring its activity from the Zone System Sensible Cooling Rate output variable).
I tried several the setpoints values (5-30 for heating, 40 for cooling; 5-50 for heating, 60 for cooling), different weather files, but the cooling still works. I have also tried to change the thermostat setpoint from DualSetPoint to SingleHeating, which according to the documentation is "Used for a heating only thermostat. The setpoint can be scheduled and varied throughout the simulation but only heating is allowed with this control type.". But the problem still remains.
Am I missing something? I guess so, because the trick is quite common, I read it also in other questions in this forum.
Thank you in advance for any contribution.
