Simulation Validation with Real Measurements of an Intelligent Home Energy Management System.

Abstract: This thesis's main objective is to conduct a comparison study between measured values and simulated results of a demonstrator, of the intelligent home energy management (iHEM) project. The comparison helps to validate the simulation. TRNSYS software is used for the design. In this study, only the thermal energy side of the project is considered. In which system-level (both domestic hot water (DHW), space heating (SH)) and component level (solar collector, gas boiler) are considered as the parameters to compare. An attempt is made to optimize both system-level and component-level simulation outputs with measured values by adopting measured boundary conditions as simulation inputs.During the comparison, the DHW loop simulation design is modified. The measured data were given as input files for simulation, replacing the estimated values used before. This is done to optimize the simulation output with measured data. In the space heating loop (SH), the simulated building model’s parameters were changed to optimize the SH demand. After the system-level validation and optimization, the component level comparison is carried out. For this, the simulation output of solar thermal collectors and gas boiler are compared with measured values. The solar collector loop in the simulation is modified to optimize the simulated results. The seasonal and yearly efficiencies of the collector have been calculated. Solar supply fraction and gas boiler supply fraction is also determined. For the comparison, graphs are plotted for three different weeks, representing the spring, summer, and winter months of 2018.The final optimized simulation output of DHW demand is 7% less than the measured value. Even after optimizing the Space heating loop (SH), the simulated building demand is 17% more heat than the demonstrator building. The simulation's solar collector output is optimized close to the measured values. The simulated gas boiler produces 19% more than the demonstrator system to meet excess SH demand in the simulation (including losses). The overall yearly collector efficiency calculated for measured and simulated values are 58% and 50%, respectively. The estimated solar collector supply fraction and gas boiler supply fraction is 26%, 76% for measured, and 23%, 81% for simulation, respectively.