Modelica Buildings library

This is the development site for the Modelica Buildings library and its user guide.

Stable releases including all previous releases are available from the main project site at http://simulationresearch.lbl.gov/modelica.

Instructions for developers are available on the wiki.

Library description

The Modelica Buildings library is a free open-source library with dynamic simulation models for building energy and control systems. The library contains models for

• HVAC systems for buildings, district energy systems, and data centers,
• components and systems with energy storage,
• controls, including a reference implementation of ASHRAE Standard 231P,
• heat transfer among rooms and the outside, either
  • natively in Modelica with a detailed or a reduced order model, or
  • integrated run-time coupling with EnergyPlus, aka, Spawn of EnergyPlus
• multizone airflow, including natural ventilation and contaminant transport,
• single-zone computational fluid dynamics coupled to heat transfer and HVAC systems,
• data-driven load prediction for demand response applications, and
• electrical DC and AC systems with two- or three-phases that can be balanced and unbalanced.

The main project site is http://simulationresearch.lbl.gov/modelica.

Current release

Download Buildings Library 11.0.0 (2024-04-09)

License

The Modelica Buildings Library is available under a 3-clause BSD-license. See Modelica Buildings Library license.

Python modules are available under a 3-clause BSD-license. See BuildingsPy license.

Development and contribution

You may report any issues with using the Issues button.

Contributions in the form of Pull Requests are always welcome. Prior to issuing a pull request, make sure your code follows the style guide and coding conventions.

Building binaries

The distribution at https://simulationresearch.lbl.gov/modelica/download.html contains all binaries, and users need not do any other step.

Developers may install or build these binaries individually.

There are three different binaries:

1. The Spawn of EnergyPlus library that contains a special version of EnergyPlus.
2. The Modelica to EnergyPlus library that provides a layer to link Modelica with EnergyPlus.
3. The fmi-library that provides the API functions that communicate with EnergyPlus.

To install or build these libraries, proceed as described below.

Spawn of EnergyPlus library

If the Buildings library is cloned from github, then the EnergyPlus libraries need to be installed by running

Buildings/Resources/src/ThermalZones/install.py --binaries-for-os-only

To install the binaries for all operating systems, omit the flag --binaries-for-os-only

Modelica to EnergyPlus

Rebuilding this library requires CMake to be installed.

To rebuild the library, run

cd modelica-buildings
rm -rf build && mkdir build && cd build && \
  cmake ../ && cmake --build . --target install && \
  cd .. && rm -rf build

fmi-library

Rebuilding this library requires CMake to be installed.

To rebuild the library, run

cd Buildings/Resources/src/fmi-library
rm -rf build && mkdir build && \
  cd build && cmake .. && cmake --build . && \
  cd .. && rm -rf build

Citation

To cite the library, use

Michael Wetter, Wangda Zuo, Thierry S. Nouidui and Xiufeng Pang. Modelica Buildings library. Journal of Building Performance Simulation, 7(4):253-270, 2014.

@Article{WetterZuoNouiduiPang2014,
  author  =  {Michael Wetter and Wangda Zuo and Thierry S. Nouidui and Xiufeng Pang},
  title   =  {Modelica {Buildings} library},
  journal =  {Journal of Building Performance Simulation},
  volume  =  {7},
  number  =  {4},
  pages   =  {253--270},
  year    =  {2014},
  doi     =  {10.1080/19401493.2013.765506},
  url     = "https://doi.org/10.1080/19401493.2013.765506"
}