Tag: modelica

SBS Team Attends American Modelica Conference at University of Conneticut

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Prof. Wangda Zuo and team members Zhanwei He and Viswanathan Ganesh attended the American Modelica Conference at UConn. Here they learned more about advanced modeling methods and model-based design. They enjoyed the insightful keynotes from Dr. Swaminathan Gopalswamy (Texas A&M) and Clas Jacobson (Carrier). This was an exciting trip as Viswanathan was awarded Penn State’s Borda Travel Scholarship to present our paper on “Advancements in Building-to-Grid Interactions: Thermo-Electric Coupling Models of Motor-driven Devices” at the conference. Our Post-Doctoral scholar Zhanwei delivered a presentation on “Efficient Simplified Models for District Energy CHP Systems”. We are happy that there was so much great work for our lab to present. Many thanks to the organizers of the conference for all their hard work in putting on an amazing experience.

SBS Lab Member Hongjun Li Receives Prestigious Scholarship

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SBS lab member and new Ph.D. student Hongjun Li received the prestigious University Graduate Fellowship in the Pennsylvania State College of Engineering. This was given in recognition of his strong academic record and served to enable him to establish his research and other activities. This is a great start to Hongjun’s time with the lab. He has a Master degree in Architecture from Tsinghua University with a research focus on distributed urban energy systems. His Ph.D. work will be in Architectural Engineering with research on Modelica-based modeling for the design and control of advanced building energy systems.

SBS Lab Member Julia Ho Receives IBUILD Fellowship

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Congratulations to SBS lab member Julia Ho on becoming the first Penn State student selected for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Innovation in Buildings (IBUILD) Graduate Research Fellowship. Julia’s research focuses improving modeling and design of low-carbon heating and cooling systems. She will use this fellowship to evaluate the feasibility of low-carbon heating and cooling for rural communities using advanced modeling tools such as Modelica. More information can be found here.

SBS Lab Member Viswanathan Ganesh Passes His Ph.D. Comprehensive Exam

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Congratulations to SBS lab member Viswanathan Ganesh on passing his Ph.D. comprehensive exam. His research focuses on building-to-grid integration and its application to data centers. As part of this research, he has developed new Modelica models for induction motors and is in the process of releasing these to the open source Modelica Buildings Library. Viswanathan joins several of our lab members who have recently passed their Ph.D, comprehensive exams.

Research Paper Published on Efficient Smart and Connected Community

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An efficient smart and connected community (SCC) depends on the interconnectivity of essential infrastructure systems. However, current modeling tools cannot determine which interconnections are most important to include, particularly as system dynamics become more complex with high-order effects.

As a joint effort of current and former SBS Lab Ph.D. students Saranya Anbarasu, Kathryn Hinkelman, and Jing Wang, our new paper in the Journal of Energy and Buildings proposes a comprehensive framework that incorporates multi-layers, multi-blocks, and multi-agents to model interdependent infrastructure systems. Interconnections span cyber, physical, and logical aspects, including human interactions. With the equation-based object-oriented language Modelica, we model energy, transportation, communication, and water systems for a hypothetical SCC and assess higher-order interdependency effects during normal operation. Additionally, we develop a quasi-Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis framework and use variance-based sensitivity metrics to assess the impact of interdependencies on energy system operation.

This paper can be accessed freely until September 5, 2024 at this link.

 

Prof. Zuo Gives a Keynote at IBPSA-Ireland Research Symposium

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Prof. Zuo was honored with the opportunity to give a keynote at the IBPSA-Ireland Research Symposium. This is a great honor and exciting to see so many students attending. We are thankful to our Irish collaborators and colleagues for organizing the event and sending their students to the symposium. There were a lot of students using Modelica in their research which is exciting to see. Prof. Zuo was also able to serve as a juror for the “Best Thesis in 3 Presentation”. We are excited to see so many great theses and congratulate everyone on their amazing work. We are looking forward to seeing everyone again and future potential collaborations

SBS Lab Member Zhanwei He to Present Research at SimBuild 2024

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We are excited to have Zhanwei He present “Computationally Efficient and Accurate Modeling of Combined Heating and Power Systems for District Energy Applications” at SimBuild 2024 in Technical session 8: Grid Interactions and Distributed Energy Resources. The presentation introduces Modelica-based simplified combined heat and power (CHP) models that achieve computational efficiency and high accuracy. This is the outcome of our DOE project “Optimal Co-Design of Integrated Thermal-Electrical Networks and Control Systems for Grid-Interactive Efficient District (GED) Energy Systems.” Zhanwei is working with current lab members Saranya Anbarasu, Katy Hinkelman, lab alumni Ardi Moftakhari, and Lawrence Berkley National Lab’s Jianjun Hu to release these models in the Modelica Buildings Library.

We are so excited to see our lab members presenting their work. To see a summary of the presentation and details for where it will be held follow this link.

SBS Lab Member Saranya Anbarasu Passes Her Ph.D. Comprehensive Exam

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Congratulations to SBS lab member Saranya Anbarasu on passing her Ph.D. comprehensive exam. Her research is focused on developing innovative models for integrated community energy systems. She has worked on multiple U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and National Science Foundation (NSF) projects on community energy systems and smart & connected communities. She has published papers and developed Modelica models for community energy systems, which have been publicly released in the open source Modelica Buildings Library (MBL).

SBS Lab Members Katy Hinkelman and Saranya Anbarasu Publishes Paper

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SBS lab members Katy Hinkelman and Saranya Anbarasu published a paper applying innovative solutions to building decarbonization. In the newly published paper by Energy and Buildings, they applied ecological network analysis (ENA) for buildings. Exergy is proposed as the best for ENA dynamic systems with multiple types of energy. They also demonstrate how ENA can add novel complex network information for buildings.

They then performed case studies to redesign the heating and cooling systems for an office and data center, coupling the systems together via ambient-loop district energy. These redesigns achieved 84% heating/cooling energy savings. The paper can be accessed freely until January 24, 2024 at this link.

Opensource Modelica models related to this work have been publicly released at:

  1. Modelica Buildings Library (MBL): https://simulationresearch.lbl.gov/modelica/
  2. Biomimetic Integrated Community Energy and Power Systems (BICEPS) Library: https://sites.psu.edu/sbslab/tools/biceps-library/

This research led by Katy Hinkelman and Saranya Anbarasu at Penn State University is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) IBUILD program and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Other related papers can be found at this link.

 

Release of New Sand Heating Systems Modelica Package

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We are excited to announce the release of open-source Modelica package for sand heating systems. The package contains models for particle-based silica-sand thermal energy storage (TES) in heating applications.

Silica sand is an abundant, low-cost, and efficient storage medium for solar power and electricity generation. Solid particle TES could be used to benefit building and district heating systems, particularly as building electrification and renewable energy penetration increases. To enable heating system design and evaluation with sand TES, the package contains base classes through complete systems with equipment, controls, and ready-to-use scripts for simulating and plotting.

This research was led by SBS Lab members Katy Hinkelman and David Milner. The details are documented in the conference paper “Open-Source Models for Sand-Based Thermal Storage in Heating Applications“, which was presented at the 15th International Modelica Conference. This research was done in collaboration with researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory where another conference paper was published demonstrating the usage of the package via case study for district energy systems.

To access the package and related papers please visit Modelica Sand Heating Package.