A Distributed Multi-Model Platform to Cosimulate Multi-Energy Systems in Smart Buildings

Nowadays, buildings are responsible for large consumption of energy in our cities. Moreover, buildings can be seen as the smallest entity of urban energy systems. On these premises, in this paper, we present a flexible and distributed co-simulation platform that exploits a multi-modelling approach to simulate and evaluate energy performance in smart buildings. The developed platform exploits the Mosaik co-simulation framework and implements the Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) standard in order to couple and synchronise heterogeneous simulators and models. The platform combines in a shared simulation environment: i) the thermal performance of the building simulated with EnergyPlus; ii) a heat pump integrated with a PID control strategy modelled in Modelica to satisfy the heating demand of the building; iii) an electrical energy storage system modelled in MATLAB Simulink; and iv) different Python models used to simulate household occupancy, electrical loads, photovoltaic production and smart meters, respectively. The platform guarantees a plug-and-play integration of models and simulators, in which one or more models can be easily replaced without affecting the whole simulation engine. Finally, we present a demonstration example to test the functionalities, capability and usability of the developed platform and discuss future developments of our framework.