New release Hysopt software: the Pareto Dashboard

With Pareto, everything revolves around transparency to make the right design choices. The Pareto Dashboard is the pinnacle of the Hysopt design philosophy.

Making the right design choices is not always straightforward as
different aspects are to be considered. Energy consumption, CO2-emission and investment should be as low as possible and at the same time, we want the thermal comfort to be as high as possible. But how do these KPIs correlate with each other? How do we compare energy consumption with thermal comfort? And what are the client’s exact wishes and its prioritisation?

The Pareto Dashboard brings full transparency to make the best decisions.

Pareto brings transparency to the design process. Enabling you to analyse a heating and cooling system more easily and advising clients even better. The user can compare various conceptsof an installation to make the right design choices. And with the computing power of the Hysopt software, this important exercise can be accelerated and automated. The “Pareto Dashboard” is developed to support your analysis in a user-friendly and visual manner. It is introduced next to the “Designer”, where systems are built and optimised.

The Hysopt software is extended with the possibility to perform a Pareto analysis on simulated models. Through a familiar model browser, you can select the models and configure your analysis with the relevant parameters. The software automatically calculates several key performance indicators and compares them with each other. All results are presented and visualised in the Pareto Dashboard to give you a clear overview and assist you in the analysis.

Energy

The Pareto Dashboard consists of an“Energy” section, where the different energy flows can be analysed. Several energy-related figures are calculated and displayed:

• energy consumptions, savings and efficiencies
• energy cost and savings
• CO2-emissions and reductions
• production share of the different energy sources
• other performance indicators relevant to your project

Some figures are specific to a model, others are relative to the reference model. This is especially helpful if you want to compare a situation with possible alternatives.

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Comfort

The Hysopt software has been extended with better support for the analysis of the building’s comfort.

The room controller can quantify comfort during a simulation. The difference between the configured setpoint and the actual temperature is monitored. The degree of temperature deviation is classified into four classes.

The calculation of general comfort is based on the ‘Fanger Theory’ for the definition of comfort in a building.

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Every room controller now provides insight into the time allocation in each comfort class, as well as the overall comfort class, main comfort class and general comfort figure.

The overall comfort class is the worst class with a percentile of more than 1, the main comfort class is the class with the highest percentile and the general comfort is calculated with the percentages of all classes. In the given example, the general comfort figure indicates that 93.8% of all the users of this room are satisfied with the room temperature.

These figures are used by Pareto to compare models regarding comfort. Which model has the best comfort or the highest discomfort? How much comfort improvement is there relative to the reference model?

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Furthermore, the room controller available in the Hysopt library is extended with an economiser function, as this is widely used in practice. The economiser analyses the behaviour of the room controller during the simulation and learns from those observations. When the configured setpoint is not reached at the desired time, the economiser will adapt so that in the future the configured setpoint is reached at the correct moment. This can both save energy as well as improve comfort.

Investment

Pareto enables the user to analyse the costs and savings of all system alternatives. The Net Present Value (NPV),the payback and Internal Rate of Return (IRR) are calculated based on the configured parameters. In a simple overview, we provide insight into the financial performance of each system alternative.

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Pareto Graphs and Front

Finally, the performance of different system alternatives can be visualized in our Pareto graphs. These graphs compare and visualise all the models on 2 specific KPIs. The Hysopt software currently supports the following comparisons:

• Energy cost vs discomfort
• Energy cost vs investment
• Investment vs discomfort
• Net Present value vs discomfort
• CO2 vs discomfort
• Energy cost vs CO2

Every graph will show a Pareto front. This front connects the optimal concepts regarding the analysed KPIs.All system alternatives which are not on the Pareto front can be considered as sub-optimal. This makes the Pareto graph a powerful instrument to draw theClients’ attention to the optimal system alternatives and thereby enables theClient to make an optimal choice, depending on his/her prioritisation of these KPIs.