Yet Another Residential District Simulator: yards for Controller Development in the Residential Built Environment

Innovation in residential energy systems drives researchefforts towards novel building and district controlstrategies. Development and testing of such strategiesrequires advanced, interactive building and districtsimulators. This paper presents yards, an interactivesimulator that combines the modelling capabilities ofModelica with a language-agnostic and cross-platforminterface for controller development. yards offersmodelling flexibility beyond that of existing tools, as anycustom, user-provided building or district model can beimplemented easily. A case study demonstrates how yards canbe used to simulate a tiny cluster of buildings.