%0 Conference Paper %B IBPSA Building Simulation 2019 %D 2019 %T Prototyping the BOPTEST Framework for Simulation-Based Testing of Advanced Control Strategies in Buildings %A David Blum %A Filip Jorissen %A Sen Huang %A Yan Chen %A Javier Arroyo %A Kyle Benne %A Yanfei Li %A Valentin Gavan %A Lisa Rivalin %A Lieve Helsen %A Draguna Vrabie %A Michael Wetter %A Marina Sofos %K benchmarking %K building simulation %K Model predictive control %K software development %X

Advanced control strategies are becoming increasingly necessary in buildings in order to meet and balance requirements for energy efficiency, demand flexibility, and occupant comfort. Additional development and widespread adoption of emerging control strategies, however, ultimately require low implementation costs to reduce payback period and verified performance to gain control vendor, building owner, and operator trust. This is difficult in an already first-cost driven and risk-averse industry. Recent innovations in building simulation can significantly aid in meeting these requirements and spurring innovation at early stages of development by evaluating performance, comparing state-of-the-art to new strategies, providing installation experience, and testing controller implementations. This paper presents the development of a simulation framework consisting of test cases and software platform for the testing of advanced control strategies (BOPTEST - Building Optimization Performance Test). The objectives and requirements of the framework, components of a test case, and proposed software platform architecture are described, and the framework is demonstrated with a prototype implementation and example test case.

%B IBPSA Building Simulation 2019 %C Rome, Italy %G eng %0 Journal Article %J Journal of Building Performance Simulation %D 2018 %T Simplifications for hydronic system models in Modelica %A Filip Jorissen %A Michael Wetter %A Lieve Helsen %X

Building systems and their heating, ventilation and air conditioning ow networks, are becoming increasingly complex. Some building energy simulation tools simulate these ow networks using pressure drop equations. These ow network models typically generate coupled algebraic nonlinear systems of equations, which become increasingly more difficult to solve as their sizes increase. This leads to longer computation times and can cause the solver to fail. These problems also arise when using the equation-based modelling language Modelica and Annex 60 based libraries. This may limit the applicability of the library to relatively small problems unless problems are restructured. This paper discusses two algebraic loop types and presents an approach that decouples algebraic loops into smaller parts, or removes them completely. The approach is applied to a case study model where an algebraic loop of 86 iteration variables is decoupled into smaller parts with a maximum of 5 iteration variables.

%B Journal of Building Performance Simulation %G eng %R 10.1080/19401493.2017.1421263 %0 Journal Article %J Energy Conversion and Management %D 2017 %T Dynamic equation-based thermo-hydraulic pipe model for district heating and cooling systems %A Brahm van der Heijde %A Marcus Fuchs %A Carles Ribas Tugores %A Gerald Schweiger %A Kevin Sartor %A Daniele Basciotti %A Dirk Muller %A Christoph Nytsch-Geusen %A Michael Wetter %A Lieve Helsen %X

Simulation and optimisation of district heating and cooling networks requires efficient and realistic models of the individual network elements in order to correctly represent heat losses or gains, temperature propagation and pressure drops. Due to more recent thermal networks incorporating meshing decentralised heat and cold sources, the system often has to deal with variable temperatures and mass flow rates, with flow reversal occurring more frequently. This paper presents the mathematical derivation and software implementation in Modelica of a thermo-hydraulic model for thermal networks that meets the above requirements and compares it to both experimental data and a commonly used model. Good correspondence between experimental data from a controlled test set-up and simulations using the presented model was found. Compared to measurement data from a real district heating network, the simulation results led to a larger error than in the controlled test set-up, but the general trend is still approximated closely and the model yields results similar to a pipe model from the Modelica Standard Library. However, the presented model simulates 1.7 (for low number of volumes) to 68 (for highly discretized pipes) times faster than a conventional model for a realistic test case. A working implementation of the presented model is made openly available within the IBPSA Modelica Library. The model is robust in the sense that grid size and time step do not need to be adapted to the flow rate, as is the case in finite volume models.

%B Energy Conversion and Management %V 151 %G eng %2 2001049 %R 10.1016/j.enconman.2017.08.072 %0 Journal Article %D 2015 %T Simulation Speed Analysis and Improvements of Modelica Models for Building Energy Simulation %A Filip Jorissen %A Michael Wetter %A Lieve Helsen %X

This paper presents an approach for speeding up Modelica models. Insight is provided into how Modelica models are solved and what determines the tool’s computational speed. Aspects such as algebraic loops, code efficiency and integrator choice are discussed. This is illustrated using simple building simulation examples and Dymola. The generality of the work is in some cases verified using OpenModelica. Using this approach, a medium sized office building including building envelope, heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and control strategy can be simulated at a speed five hundred times faster than real time.

%2 LBNL-1002904