Sim-PowerCS: An extensible and simplified open-source energy simulator

Abstract

In today’s world, optimizing energy consumption is critical to combat climate change and natural resource depletion. Smart control of building and home devices is a promising approach to achieving this goal, but due to the difficulties of testing in real environments it is necessary to rely on simulators for a comprehensive evaluation of algorithms in a realistic simulated context at a low cost. In this paper we present a Java-based simulator that allows users to define energy sources and services, test different algorithms, run procedural simulations, and independently optimize energy management and service control. Sim-PowerCS is designed to be easy to understand, use, and extend, enabling any researcher to quickly adapt it to their specific use cases.

Keywords

• Energy management
• Power optimization
• Simulation
• Open-source software