Demod: a new Python lybrary for domestic energy demand modeling

Dear All,

During the past year, Lionel Constantin (@Lionel) and I have been developing demod , an open-source python library for socio-technical simulation of domestic energy demand (e.g., electric and thermal).

The library can be used in various applications:

  • Direct use for generating household occupancy, activity, thermal and electrical demand profiles with high temporal resolution.
  • Integration of demod-based domestic energy demand model within co-simulation ecosystems (e.g. mosaik) for the study of larger scale scenarios.
  • Improve, parameterize based on your dataset , or extend demod modules to run your own scenarios and perform cross-analysis.

Depending on the application, demod can be accessed on GitHub or PyPI.
In addition, it is extensively documented on readthedocs.

demod is inspired by the literature on activity-based energy demand modeling and has been developed with the aim of making this modeling approach more accessible to all.
For those who are interested, the documentation refers to some relevant manuscripts.

This is a work in progress and we are planning to add new modules and features (i.e., electric mobility, heat pumps, German building stock …) . For these reasons any comments and criticism regarding the model or the documentation, as well as proposals for the development of new modules and recommendations of similar projects and relevant open access datasets (especially for Germany) would be greatly appreciated!

I would also like to take this opportunity to promote a first work developed with the colleagues in Oldenburg and presented at the 10th DACH+ Conference on Energy Informatics.
The manuscript is available in the conference proceedings and shows the motivations for the development of demod along with a simple co-simulation application with mosaik for illustrative purposes.