IDA ICE 

IDA ICE (IDA Indoor Climate and Energy) is a simulation application for accurate study of indoor climate of individual thermal zones in a building as well as energy consumption for the entire building. The user interface has been designed to make it easy to build up and simulate simple cases, but also to offer the advanced user the full flexibility of IDA, to facilitate the simulation of complex or unusual cases.

The system to be simulated consists of a building with one or more zones (rooms) and a primary system (the subsystem containing primarily hydronic components such as chillers and boilers) and one or more air handling units. The default plant and AHU have unlimited capacity for providing zones with air and water at given temperatures. For many studies nothing needs to be altered in these central HVAC systems.

With version 4, two additional concepts are added: ideal room units (cooler and heater) and local air handling units. Local AHUs are the same thing as central AHUs, but they serve only a single zone and they are reached only from this zone (under the More… button). Ideal room units provide zones with heating and cooling, but they are not physically connected to the central plant. They can be thought of as self contained boilers and chillers, consuming electricity or fuel and serving the zone with heating or cooling.

Surrounding buildings or other objects might shade the building. The air inside the building contains both humidity and carbon dioxide. Weather data is supplied by weather data files containing information on actual or synthetic weather. The effects of wind on the building may be taken into consideration. Predefined building components can be loaded from a database. This can also be used to store personally defined building components.

The program is built up around forms and dialogs. The Status bar can be found at the bottom of the IDA window. In many cases it explains in brief the significance of the different areas (list boxes, parameter boxes, etc.) that can be found under the cursor in the different forms and dialogs. It is recommended that the user get into the habit of reading the text in the Status bar if anything is unclear.