Modelica Buildings library (original) (raw)

Open source library for design and operation of building and district energy and control systems

Partial view of an implementation of a variable air volume flow system.

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The Modelica Buildings library is a free open-source library with dynamic simulation models for building and district energy and control systems. Its primary use is for flexible and fast modeling in support of design and operation of new and existing energy and control systems for buildings, districts and data centers. The library is particularly suited for

• rapid prototyping, design and analysis of new and existing energy and control systems for buildings, districts and data centers,
• testing of integrated energy systems and products to reduce their risk prior to field demonstrations or deployment,
• controls development, specification, verification and deployment within a model-based design process,
• analysis of the operation of existing building systems, and
• export of digital twins to support operation for functional testing, verification of control sequences, energy-minimizing controls, fault detection and diagnostics.

The library contains models for

• HVAC systems,
• energy storage (water and ice tanks, borehole and borefields, PCM, and battery),
• controls, including a reference implementation of ASHRAE Standard 231P,
• heat transfer among rooms and the outside, either
  • natively in Modelica with a detailed or a reduced order model, or
  • integrated run-time coupling with EnergyPlus, aka, Spawn of EnergyPlus
• multizone airflow, including natural ventilation and contaminant transport,
• single-zone computational fluid dynamics coupled to heat transfer and HVAC systems,
• data-driven load prediction for demand response applications,
• electrical DC and AC systems with two- or three-phases that can be balanced and unbalanced, and
• system and template models for HVAC systems, district energy systems and data center cooling systems.

Projects that use this library include:

• The Spawn of EnergyPlus, a next-generation simulation engine for building and control energy systems.
• OpenBuildingControl, which develops tools and processes for the performance evaluation, specification and verification of building control sequences, based on the emerging ASHRAE Standard 231P "CDL - A Control Description Language for Building Environmental Control Sequences". The library is used to serve as areference implementation for CDL, and as a repository of control sequences that comply with CDL.
• IBPSA Project 1, which creates open-source software that builds the basis of next generation computing tools for the design and operation of building and district energy and control systems.
• BOPTEST, the Building Optimization Performance Test framework that is developed to test and compare advanced building control algorithms using vetted whole building system emulators.
• Thermal Reservoir Networks for Modularly Expandable Thermal Microgrids.
• Optimal Co-Design of Integrated Thermal-Electrical Networks and Control Systems for Grid-interactive Efficient District (GED) Energy Systems.
• Improving Data Center Energy Efficiency through End-to-End Cooling Modeling and Optimization.

All development is open-source and we welcome contributions.

The models are available under the followingopen-source license.