EnergyPlus Crashes When Adding Windows to Rotating Building Model Using Site:VariableLocation

[AmmarDeh1]

Issue overview

Overview
The documentation mentions that Site:VariableLocation is capable of modeling a rotating building. To test its capabilities, I ran experiments using both an older version (v9.1) and the latest version (v25.1). For debugging and testing, I started from the VaryingLocationAndOrientation.idf example file and modified it to represent a simple building with window surfaces, instead of a vessel with "Underwater" boundary conditions.

Issue
Two main issues:

1. Field Order Shift
   The field order appears to be shifted by one compared to the IDD documentation. So the Name field takes a latitude schedule, the Building Location Latitude Schedule takes the Longitude schedule, etc. This was confirmed by checking the Input Verification and Results Summary in the EnergyPlus default tabular report. Also, in v25.1, if a non-schedule name is provided in the Name field, EnergyPlus throws a severe error:

** Severe  ** ReadVariableLocationOrientation: Site:VariableLocation = 
   **   ~~~   ** Name = VARIABLE, item not found.

2. Simulation Crashes with Window Surfaces
   When using Site:VariableLocation with window geometry either using FenestrationSurface:Detailed or Window:

• In v9.1, any presence of a window object causes EnergyPlus to crash with a blank .err file.
• In v25.1, the simulation runs only if there is exactly one window or no windows. If more than one is defined, the simulation crashes.

To test functional equivalence of a v25.1 model considering a building with one window, I ran simulations comparing:

• A model with fixed 90° orientation using the Building object.
• A model with dynamic orientation (constant 90° schedule) using Site:VariableLocation.

For the output variable Surface Outside Face Incident Solar Radiation Rate per Area [W/m2]:

• Surfaces with windows showed major discrepancies between the two runs (Surface 4 in the graph below).
• Surfaces with no windows align better (surface 3)

Operating System (Multiple choices)

Windows

Operating System Version

Win 11

Version of EnergyPlus

9.1; 25.1

Unmethours link or helpdesk ticket number

https://unmethours.com/question/102666/energyplus-crashes-when-adding-windows-to-rotating-building-model-using-sitevariablelocation/

Defect file

VaryingLocationAndOrientation_v9_1.idf.txt

VaryingLocationAndOrientation_v25_1.idf.txt

[AmmarDeh1]

Just wanted to reference the initial pull request that introduced this object: #6188, created by @Myoldmopar — might be helpful for context and tracking down the original implementation details.

[kevin-moos]

I was able to recreate this in 25.2, so I'll take a look at it.