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Why do BPS?

Research and policy development

There are numerous research-focused use cases, where BPS is used, e.g. to perform theoretical tests that might be too time consuming, costly, or impossible to perform in a lab such as analyzing product performance for an entire building, testing a novel control strategy for equipment or predicting the dynamic behavior of large scale utility projects with ideas for energy management and trading across an entire town/city/region.

BPS also plays a large role in energy policy development. When energy codes and standards are updated (typically every 3-4 years and often associated with the development of simplified planning methods), a massive number of simulations are run to evaluate the impacts of the changes to the code. These impacts may include projected savings of a given measure on different building types in different climate zones. Savings may also be projected out to determine a statewide or national savings estimate associated with enacting the new code requirements.

Other metrics are also typically analyzed including carbon impacts. More prevalent in recent years is analysis that also includes impact on the utility grids, especially when policies include renewable energy generation or battery storage requirements.

And last but not least, BPS methods and tools themselves are constantly further developed for the project specific use in practice. This includes

• more detailed and accurate models such as a stratified instead of well mixed zone model
• models for new product types such as an electrical battery and its charger
• methods for multi objective optimization
• possibilities to combine thermal simulations with other simulations such as hygrothermal simulation, CFD, daylight simulation in a more efficient and tightly coupled way
• methods to combine physical white box models of BPS with AI black box models for less predictable and nonphysical phenomena’s such as occupancy and user behavior.
• use of BPS in other engineering fields such as PV, thermal district networks, geothermal energy, utility grids, electrical vehicles etc.
• standards for interface formats between different BPS tools or between BPS and other digital methods in the planning process, such as ifc for geometry from CAD, roombooks for HVAC design, FMI for coupled simulations, code standards for PLC (programmable logic controllers) etc.
• Using BPS models as digital twin for new application possibilities, such as fault detection and diagnosis, model-based normalization, virtual sensing and operating control (see next section).

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