Demonstration of the new ESP-r and TRNSYS co-simulator for modelling solar buildings

The pursuit of innovative architectural designs and the development of novel and integrated energy conversion, storage, and distribution technologies presents a challenge for existing building performance simulation (BPS) tools. No single BPS tool offers sufficient capabilities and the flexibility to resolve all the possible design variants of interest. The development of a co-simulation between the ESP-r and TRNSYS simulation tools has been accomplished to address this need by enabling an integrated simulation approach that rigorously treats both building physics and energy systems. The capabilities of this new modelling environment are demonstrated in this paper. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.