EnergyPlus Integration into Co-Simulation Environment to Improve Home Energy Saving Through Cyber-Physical Systems Development

Published

August 21, 2018

Author(s)

Thomas Roth, Cuong Nguyen, Joe Singer, Chenli Wang, Hohyun Lee

Abstract

This paper presents a co-simulation platform which combines a building simulation tool with a Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) approach. Residential buildings have a great potential of energy reduction by controlling home equipment based on usage information. A CPS can eliminate unnecessary energy usage on a small, local scale by autonomously optimizing equipment activity, based on sensor measurements from the home. It can also allow peak shaving from the grid if a collection of homes are connected. However, lack of verification tools limits effective development of CPS products. The present work integrates EnergyPlus, which is a widely adopted building simulation tool, into an open source development environment for CPS released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The NIST environment utilizes the IEEE High Level Architecture (HLA) standard for data exchange and logical timing control to integrate a suite of simulators into a common platform. A simple CPS model, which controls local HVAC temperature set-point based on environmental conditions, was tested with the developed co-simulation platform. The proposed platform can be expanded to integrate various simulation tools and various home simulations, thereby allowing for co-simulation of more intricate building energy systems.

Conference Dates

June 24-28, 2018

Conference Location

Lake Buena Vista, FL, US

Conference Title

ASME Energy Sustainabiltiy Conference

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1115/ES2018-7295

Local Download

Keywords

Cyber-Physical Systems, Co-simulation platform, EnergyPlus, HVAC

Citation

Roth, T. , Nguyen, C. , Singer, J. , Wang, C. and Lee, H. (2018), EnergyPlus Integration into Co-Simulation Environment to Improve Home Energy Saving Through Cyber-Physical Systems Development, ASME Energy Sustainabiltiy Conference, Lake Buena Vista, FL, US, [online], https://doi.org/10.1115/ES2018-7295, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=924926 (Accessed October 8, 2025)