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Getting Started with EnergyPlus co-simulation toolbox

Description

The toolbox facilitates simultaneous simulation of EnergyPlus and Matlab (co-simulation). The main component is the 'mlep' class containing all the necessary tools to configure and run EnergyPlus co-simulation within the Matlab environment.

System Requirements

  • Windows. The toolbox has only been tested for Windows, but considerable preparations for other OS has already been done.
  • EnergyPlus installed. You can obtain the software here https://energyplus.net/. If you install the EnergyPlus to the default location ('C:\EnergyPlusVx-x-x') then it might be detected automatically by the toolbox. Please note, that you should always simulate IDF files by the same version of the EnergyPlus with which they were created or you can alternatively upgrade the IDF file by the IDFVersionUpdater (located under 'C:\EnergyPlusVx-x-x\PreProcess\IDFVersionUpdater').

Install

Download and install the toolbox binary from https://github.com/dostaji4/EnergyPlus-co-simulation-toolbox/releases.

Features

The toolbox contains:

  • Parsing of the IDF file to determine co-simulation inputs/outputs.
  • Automatic socket communication configuration (on localhost).
  • Background start of the EnergyPlus process with output to the Matlab command line.
  • System Object implementation usable in Matlab & Simulink.
  • Bus input/output integration for easy Simulink model setup.
  • A 'mlep Bus Creator' block to facilitate Simulink co-simulation input setup.

Examples

See the GettingStarted.mlx guide delivered with the Matlab toolbox or the documentation residing under Help -> Supplemental Software -> EnergyPlus co-simulation toolbox

For detailed Matlab example see

open mlepMatlab_example

Usage of the System Object functionality in Matlab is demonstrated in

open mlepMatlab_so_example

Simulink example is provided in

open mlepSimulink_example.slx