Urban Simulation Tool at the Neighbourhood Scale

Urban Simulation Tool at the Neighbourhood Scale

Innovation Type: Software

What is this innovation about?

The Urban Simulation Tool prototype consists of a software code which has been developed to analyze and optimize energy flows in a set of buildings / neighbourhoods while analyzing the interaction with electrical grid shared infrastructure. The tool provides three main functionalities:

• The co-simulation of building performance with the electrical grid;
• the evaluation of energy sharing between different users in a community and
• the assessment of the potential enhancement of buildings operation through activation of energy flexibility by means of advanced control

In order to avoid limitation due to the use of specific building simulation platforms, the use of co-simulation techniques using Functional Mock-Up Units has been a key point with the aim to couple different analysis tools when needed.
The tool is a very specialized software package, adaptable to any neighbourhood by technical staff to support planners, engineers, and energy operation companies.

What kind of challenges it will solve if deployed widely

The revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive provides a positive legal framework for zero emissions neighbourhoods and therefore a strong incentive for the creation of PED/SPENs, being the interaction between buildings and energy grids at the building and neighbourhood level a key issue. Also, the different aspects related with sharing energy between different building players in energy communities needs to be studied. There are several software tools aiming to support planning and design of several infrastructures. However, most tools operate in isolation and are difficult to integrate with each other, limiting the scope of analysis to the specific tool being used. There is a need for new tools and modules that can be seamlessly integrated into various workflows and specifically analyses the interaction with electricity grids and incorporate the possibility to test advanced controls. So, in this context and in the framework of the syn.ikia project, a software application named Urban Tool has been developed. The Urban Tool is a software application designed to analyse and optimize energy flows in a large building or within a group of buildings and examine their interaction with the shared electrical grid infrastructure.

As a summary, use of the Urban Tool can be used to analyse the behaviour of shared electrical infrastructures in plus energy neighbourhoods, by:

• Testing interaction with building simulation software through FMUs (EnergyPlus and TRNSYS18) and the supply Low Voltage Grid
• Analysis of Low Voltage Grid interaction and economic impact of different dimensioning scenarios
• Analysis of Sharing PV Energy between different consumers / buildings at neighbourhood level.
• Analysis of application of advanced flexibility control by means of co-simulation and integration of Model Predictive Control.

How has syn.ikia project impacted the development of this solution/ process/ tool?

The development of the Urban Simulation Tool has progressed in syn.ikia thanks to its testing based on case studies. Several compelling case studies based on the syn.ikia’s Spanish demo case have been conducted to explore the interaction between building models and grid models using the Urban Tool, successfully demonstrating its capabilities. Collaboration with other partners has been very valuable to develop tools capabilities, especially in the testing of advanced control algorithms.

• Grid simulation capabilities of the Urban Tool have been put in test in a variety of scenarios that consider different grid configurations and methods for electric line dimensioning. The Urban Tool was utilized to incorporate different building typologies into the study and to test its energy balance computation capabilities.
• A series of simulated energy sharing scenarios were conducted within a hypothetical energy sharing community, between the residential multifamily building (Santa Coloma de Gramenet SPEN) and an existing Health Centre building located nearby. These scenarios included an economic study that predicted the billing for each participant. The capability of the Urban Tool for conducting such studies has been successfully demonstrated. It has been found that in all the considered study cases, sharing the residential PV production resulted in an increased global self-consumption. Similarly, the global economic cost of energy was consistently lower in all sharing scenarios. These findings highlight the benefits of energy sharing and showcase the Urban Tool effectiveness in analysing and optimizing energy sharing scenarios within communities.

The Urban Tool also allows testing different control strategies on buildings to enhance operation of the systems through activation of energy flexibility. To achieve this, the system incorporates the option to integrate one or multiple control functions within the co-simulation loop. The co-simulation loop can implement one or multiple Functional Mock-up Units (FMUs), an electrical grid using Pandapower, one or multiple data files, and one or multiple control functions to control FMUs. In the current case study, a Model Predictive control (MPC) developed in Work Package 4 is implemented.

How can this innovation be used beyond syn.ikia project?
This innovative tool can be used to further elaborate research activities on the design and assessment focused on the interaction:

• Building
• On-site generation
• LV grid.

In addition, the result can be used in consultancy projects to analyse the impact of the exported energy and the flexibility strategies in terms of grid interaction.
When it is ready for commercial activities, this will be included on the IREC’s portfolio of technologies which is managed by our KTT (Knowledge and Technology Transfer) unit.

Contact person:
Jaume Salom, IREC

For more information, please see:
•
D3.5: Analysis of shared infrastructures in plus energy neighbourhoods (M43)
•
D3.6: Urban Simulation Tool Prototype (M43)
https://www.synikia.eu/resource-types/technical-reports/