Overview

 

 

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.