General overview

Optisim the energy consumption and production of a group of PODs. Each POD in an Optisim simulation is constituted by a meter, and a set of components, which are responsible for the consumption (e.g. heat pump, electrical heaters, uncontrolled loads), the production (e.g. PV plant) and the local storage (e.g. battery, EV) related to the POD. Regarding the power flow, performed at meter level, Optisim simulates it using the Krangpower library.

Basically, a simulation acts as described in the following structure:

INITIALIZATION:
    * Input data are loaded from an InfluxDB database
    * The processes needed (i.e. each meter corresponds to a unique process) to run the simulation are created
    * The Krangpower circuit is properly instantiated

SIMULATION MAIN CYCLE:
    * For each meter process (MP) ->
        ** MP reads on its queue to see the commands to actuate in the components belonging to the related meter.
        ** MP simulates the models of the components for the current time step
        ** MP writes on the output queues the results
    * Once all the MPs have finished to run the time step ->
        ** The MPs needed fort the powerflow are collected and sent to Krangpower
        ** Krangpower performs the powerflow step
        ** The data returned by Krangpower are sent on the output queue

Optisim is able to operate both in open-loop and in closed-loop mode, in this case using an internal controller algorithm or an external application as reported in the following pictures.

Optisim interacting with an external controller

Optisim operating with its internal controller

The images and schema above show how Optisim works from a high-level point of view. In order to described exhaustively how Optisim really operates, the present documentation is constituted by the following sections:

• Section Installation and running shows how to install Optisim.

• Section Configuration file structure describes the configuration file required by Optisim to run.

• Section Simulation time management explains how the aspects related to time management in a simulation (e.g. resolution).

• Section Internal Structure shows in detail the internal structure of Optisim and how it operates, as shown in the figures above.

• Section External interfaces describes the interfaces used by Optisim to interacting with external applications (e.g. controllers).

• Section Inputs shows the input dataset required by Optisim to work properly.

• Section Outputs explains the simulated results and how they are stored.

• Section Components models describes the models related to the available components.