PEExcel: A fast one-stop-shop Assessment and Simulation framework for Positive Energy Districts

We present a simulation and assessment framework PEExcel that allows researchers and practitioners to quickly model and assess the primary energy and emission balance of operation, use and mobility of a district beginning in an early planning phase as a decision support system (DSS) for the Austrian klimaaktiv label “climate neutral Positive-Energy-District-” (ger. “klimaneutrales Plus-Energie-Quartier”).The framework provides a one-stop-shop spreadsheet-based tool for input gathering, simulation, analysis, and assessment. It provides a quick and comprehensive overview on user-specified scenarios that achieve the required balances targets by the standard and features simulation times below ten seconds per district scenario on regular laptop machines.It implements an hourly thermoelectric simulation model and a built-in energy-flexible DSM controller for thermally activated building systems (TABS), hot water buffer tanks, electrochemical and EV batteries as well as offsite flexibility signals.It also serves as a common receiver and merger for most common assessment results: Timestep data for onsite renewable heat and electricity generation from generic sources, load and occupancy profiles, weather and climate data, conversion factors, etc. The framework combines this data in a ready-made analysis and assessment toolbox that includes a dashboard, interactive views of input and simulation timestep data (loads, States-of-charge, etc.), and formatted results pages featuring energy balances, load profiles, energy flows and assessment results.