Samenvatting

This report is the result of my internship at the research group Energy in Transition at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. The report shows the process and results from the development of a method to produce design and control advice to increase building energy flexibility based on open source computer simulations.

The development has been done by answering the following research question: ‘How can a Modelica computer model be used to shape an advice on a buildings Energy Flexibility to help control engineers and designers make control and design choices on this subject?’. To answer this main question the following sub-questions are answered in this report: ‘How can energy flexibility in buildings be measured?’, ‘How can the methodology of Modelica software be applied?’ and ‘How can the energy flexibility of a building be interpreted to help make control and design choices of a building on the subject of energy flexibility?’

These questions were answered by starting with a literature review in chapter 2 State-of-the-arts of energy flexibility in buildings. This chapter starts with a problem analysis and analyzes earlier done research on this subject. This is followed by determining the measuring method of energy flexibility, which answers the first sub-question from this research: ‘How can energy flexibility in buildings be measured?’. With the acquired knowledge from the literature review and assignment the list of requirements was established.

In chapter 3 Methodology, the lessons learned from the literature review have been applied to shape a methodology that is carried out to perform this research. This methodology has been drafted keeping the main research question of this report in mind: ’How can a Modelica computer model be used to shape an advice on a buildings Energy Flexibility to help control engineers and designers make control and design choices on this subject?’.

In order to verify the suggested methodology from chapter 3, this was tested in chapter 4. Implementation methodology on a case study. In this chapter a reference model was created of a case study. This model was created using the Modelica programming language and in this chapter the sub-question: ‘How can the methodology of Modelica software be applied?’ is answered. Furthermore configurations of the reference model were made in order to create the energy flexibility graphs. Finally the different ways of applying and interpreting these flexibility graphs were discussed and thereby helped answer the last sub-question: ‘How can the energy flexibility of a building be interpreted to help make control and design choices of a building on the subject of energy flexibility?’. Lastly the research is concluded in chapter 5 and recommendations are made in
chapter 6.

During this research all taken steps have been backed up with reliable resources while developing the methodology. Furthermore the proposed methodology has proven its ability to create flexibility graphs. Lastly the ways of interpreting flexibility graphs have also been analyzed and determined to have an advisory role on design choices when focusing on increasing the energy flexibility of a building. Thereby the result of this report is a methodology that can produce design and control advice to increase building energy flexibility based on open-source computer simulations.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isa-dols-22b194166/