Contribution type: Lightning talk and Poster
QuaSi — A new toolbox for energy system simulation on the scale of buildings and districts
Presenter: Etienne Ott
Description:
The simulation of energy systems is well established in both the general field of engineering and the openmod community. Many open source tools exist to facilitate this, varying in focus, purpose and suitability to a specific use case. For simulations on the scale of buildings and districts, particular considerations have to be observed. Typically the simulations ought to help make decisions in the early planning stage of a construction or renovation project, when only limited information is available. At the same time the decisions are carried forward into more detailed planning processes and thus the used tools need to be able to take details into account, while maintaining the flexibility to quickly compare different scenarios.
The development of QuaSi started with the goal in mind to better support this gap between early, less detailed results and more advanced planning stages, when details start to matter where other established tools are less robust. One focus are the operational strategies and control schemes of the components of an energy system, which include complex and non-linear effects that occur in real energy systems. Another is the flexibility to model a large variety of energy-related components in almost any energy flow configuration.
QuaSi currently consists of five major components:
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GenSim - Generates energy demand profiles for heating, cooling, lighting and electric devices based on thermal building simulation using OpenStudio™ and EnergyPlus™. A library of pre-configured building types and parameter values based on various standards is included and an Excel-GUI is available.
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SoDeLe - An easy-to-use tool to calculate energy profiles from photovoltaic systems with different orientations and different PV modules, based on python-pvlib. Ships with an Excel-GUI and a CLI for automatic workflows.
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ReSiE - The simulation engine for the calculation of power, heat and other energy flows in an energy system, including post-processing to perform an economic analysis of the simulation results. Can also perform multi-objective black-box optimisation. Its main strength and weakness is the novel mathematical approach based on aspects of systems analysis, agent-based simulation and graph theory, which can cover non-linear control mechanisms and imposes no limit on the complexity of component models.
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SUSI & SIMON: Two web-based UI tools that enable users to work with ReSiE in lieu of a full GUI.
We present an overview of the QuaSi toolbox and discuss future development and tools.
Background:
The QuaSi project is scheduled to have its first full release of the major components in August 2026. We would appreciate the opportunity to introduce the results of this muilti-year project and how it will continue to be developed and used. While a lightning talk cannot possibly cover every aspect we would like to talk about, we hope to give a brief overview and invite those interested to learn more, either during the workshop or afterwards.
Optional links: The project has a website with current news and further links at https://quasi-software.org