expert system for an intelligent supply of thermal energy

Overview

EINSTEIN provides a structured approach for the design and assessment of renewable and energy efficient (thermal) energy supply systems, both as retrofit in existing systems and for green field design composed by standards for the accountancy of energy flows in a system and for transparent economic and environmental assessment.

EINSTEIN is supported by a software-tool (expert system) and some additional tools forming the EINSTEIN tool-kit. 

 

• use cases and target group

In it’s very beginnings EINSTEIN has been conceived for its application to industrial heating and cooling. Nevertheless, it can be successfully applied also for any other non-industrial use cases with medium to large size heating and cooling demands such as big buildings, district heating and cooling networks etc.

In the focus of EINSTEIN is thermal energy supply, but an efficient design of heating and cooling design requires sector integration including distributed power generation (PV, CHP), conversion of electricity to heat and cooling (heat pumps, power-to-heat) or to fuels (power-to-gas, power-to-X) and integration into the electricity grid.

EINSTEIN can be used for:

- feasibility analysis / comparative analysis of different system options

- system design and dimensioning of main components

- system simulation and evaluation of energy, environmental and economic performance

The major target group addressed as potential users are energy engineers and energy auditors involved in system design and optimisation.

 

 

• the philosophy: objective – independent – transparent – open knowledge

The discussion about energy and related economic, social and environmental issues is a highly political one; the major technology and service providers are mostly private companies which are moved by their particular economic interests (maximisation of sales of their technologies, services, etc.) and, therefore, tend to highlight the “bright side” of their own solutions and spread it out in marketing campaigns, trade fairs and lobby activities, while at the same time hiding as much as possible the “dark sides”.

 

In contrast, EINSTEIN’s concern is to provide a methodology which allows for a comparison of different options following objective, transparent and scientifically founded criteria using a transparent and standardised assessment and evaluation framework.

 

EINSTEIN is independent of particular economic interests and adopts an a-priori neutral point of view towards different technologies and technological options, looking for the best solution in order to minimise environmental problems related with energy consumption.

EINSTEIN’s tools, algorithms and criteria are transparent and open to discussion within the community of users. The EINSTEIN software and documentation is free and open source. With this, EINSTEIN, which in major parts has been developed in the framework of publicly funded projects, follows the philosophy of „public funding for public benefit“.

 

• the history of the EINSTEIN project

EINSTEIN has been developed since 2007 in a collaboration of more than 20 institutes and companies in the Framework of the European projects EINSTEIN (2007-2009), EINSTEIN-II (2010-2012), i-ThERM (2015-2020) and several national and regional projects in Spain, Catalonia and Austria. Apart from the development of the methodology and the tool-kit, within these projects more than 500 energy auditors have been trained in 13 European countries and several other countries world-wide.

 

Since 2021, due to the lack of further funding and as personally I started working as an employee in another company, there has been no more major and active development, but in any case EINSTEIN has been maintained in my free-time as my personal „one-man-band“-project:

- the software Version EINSTEIN 3.0plus has been made available for free

- an alpha version of EINSTEIN 3.1 has been developed adding some additional technical features and converting the EINSTEIN software code to Python3. Publication is upcoming.

- an updated outline of the methodology is given here which takes into account the changes and developments that have taken place since 2012. A necessary update of the EINSTEIN guide is currently under elaboration.

 

 

• EINSTEIN for future ?

EINSTEIN from the beginning has been conceived as a free and open source (and open knowledge) project. There are many valid ideas and tools in it, developed with a lot of man and women power and public funding, including translations into several languages, so that – in my opinion – it is too worthy for just letting it disappear. At least as far as I can see there is nothing comparable or better in the energy engineering world that would make it obsolete.

 

Therefore, I will keep EINSTEIN alive in my free time in the years coming, on the one hand by using, updating and improving it in my own projects, and sharing it here with the community in the hope that some young(er) people who share the basic objectives and philosophy behind may take up and continue the project as a whole or some ideas or parts of it.

Methodology

EINSTEIN is based on a structured approach for the assessment and optimisation of energy systems

The basic pillars on which the EINSTEIN methodology is built are:

 

• quantity and quality: the importance of temperature level (exergy)

A breakdown by temperature levels of both energy demand and residual energy is the crucial basic information as a starting point for exergy optimisation of supply (e.g. heat pump application or heat exchanger networks).

 

EINSTEIN provides a standard for the accountancy of energy flows in a project, including a system of definitions of quantities, subsystem boundaries and temperature levels.

 

 

• critical environmental assessment beyond green-house-gas emissions only

The most urgent environmental concern on a short term remains the reduction of green house gas emissions. Nevertheless, the necessary large scale deployment of RES also has an important environmental impact. In many regions social movements are already forming (wind parks, large scale PV, high-voltage grids etc.) which are not willing to accept that there is no alternative to chosing between the big evil (fossil fuels) and another, even if comparatively smaller one (huge RES projects). Therefore, demand reduction and an assessment of the impact of RES use and it’s minimisation is required also for a mid-term scenario (hopefully arriving soon) where all energy sources will be renewable (with zero GHG emissions) and the technology choices necessary for this purpose. Furthermore, nuclear energy, in spite of having (almost) zero GHG emissions, in our opinion has no place in a future path to a sustainable energy supply, even not in first place due to the high associated risks (Tschernobyl, Fukushima), but still more due to the non-resolvable problem of keeping nuclear waste securely separated from the biosphere during several centuries.

 

In this context EINSTEIN provides:

 

- a sketch of a methodology for quantitative comparison of different RES systems

 

- a methodology for correcting GHG emission data in scenarios where nuclear energy is still part of the energy-mix

 

 

• costs and benefits for whom ? common good vs. private profit in economic assessment

The outcome of any type of economic analysis depends strongly on basic a priori assumptions and optimisation targets: costs and benefits for whom – for a (private or public) investor or for the common good ? if the latter case, on a local or a global level ? Almost every investment in energy saving or energy optimisation is based on substitution of current spending (purchase of energy) by investment (mainly in energy efficient equipment). Therefore, the expectation on return of investment, is crucial for assessing the economic feasibility of projects. Beyond this, in an analysis concerned with the common good, the trade-off between economy, social and environmental impact has to be taken into account.

 

EINSTEIN provides a standard for economic analysis, that provides transparency and awareness about the critical input parameters and optimisation targets and their impact on the assessment results.

 

 

• structured approach for optimisation

Although system optimisation is a complex task requiring an optimum combination of different technologies and concepts. good results can be obtained in an efficient way by applying a hierarchically structured approach for energy system optimisation as outlined by the „EINSTEIN’s eye“, followed by an iterative fine-tuning process based on dynamic system simulation.

 

EINSTEIN’s eye: hierarchically structured approach for energy system optimisation (to be followed from center to periphery)

 

The EINSTEIN methodology as developed within several R&D projects until 2012 is described in detail in the EINSTEIN Guide for Thermal Energy Audits. An updated version of this guide reflecting the developments since then and the methodology as outlined above is currently under work and will be published soon as EINSTEIN Guide for thermal energy optimisation.

 

 

 

Software

The EINSTEIN software guides the user through the whole design process spanning from data acquisition, processing and estimation to the design and quantitative (energy and economic) evaluation of alternative design options.

The EINSTEIN software contains as major features:

• structured data collection and processing (status-quo; definition/forecasting of requirements), including consistency and completeness checking and data estimation where necessary
• data analysis giving a detailed breakdown of energy consumption as a function of time and temperature level
• assisted design of system options (incl. pinch analysis, algortithms for selection of appropriate technologies and predimensioning of new equipment)#
• dynamic system simulation, supporting „quick set-up“ of simulations without need for large amount of input settigns (e.g. no need for manual configuration of system hydraulics or control strategies)
• economic and environmental analysis
• structured semi-automatic reporting