DigitalEnergyTestbed Example Application

This project contains a Lablink setup that implements a virtual testbed prototype developed as part of research project DigitalEnergyTestbed.

This setup includes the following components:

• A fully functional digital twin of a distrcit heating substation test stand is used for performing a preliminary assessment of the testbed performance. The digital twin comprises an OPC UA server, whose endpoints correspond to setpoints for and measurements from the test stand. These endpoints are linked to a thermo-hydraulic model of the test stand, which is executed internally and synchronized to real time with a fixed communication step size. An OPC UA client is used to connect the digital twin's OPC UA server with Lablink.
• Simulation models of a district heating network and a heat consumer (booster heat pump and building) are linked to the digital twin. FMU simulator clients are used to connect the the simulation models with Lablink.
• Several plotters display status information of the models and data exchange with the digital twin in real time.

All simulation models used for this virtual testbed prototype are provided as Functional Mock-up Units (FMUs) an can be found in folder fmu. They are compiled from the Modelica models provided here.

NOTE: All following instructions are for Windows, using either the command prompt (cmd.exe) or by double-clicking batch scripts (files of type *.cmd). Running the setup on Linux works analogously, using the correspondig commands from a command shell.

Prerequisites

You need to have the following software installed for running this setup:

• Java Development Kit: for instance the Oracle Java SE Development Kit 13 or the OpenJDK
• MQTT broker: for instance Eclipse Mosquitto or EMQ
• Python: tested with Python 3.8.5

Make sure that the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set and points to your JDK installation:

• open the system properties (WinKey + Pause or go to Settings => System => About => System Info => Advanced System Settings)
• select the Advanced tab, then the Environment Variables button
• select and edit the JAVA_HOME variable in the user variables, e.g., adding C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-13.0.2.

Installation

Lablink packages download

All required Lablink packages are listed as dependencies in file pom.xml (a Maven project configuration file). To download all required Lablink packages, open the command prompt, change to the project's root directory and type:

  mvnw package

OPC UA server installation

This setup uses a simple OPC UA server based on the FreeOpcUa Python library for implementing a digital twin. To install all required Python dependencies, open the command prompt, change to the project subdirectory setup\1_digital_twin and type:

  pip install -r requirements.txt

Running the virtual testbed prototype

Step 1: Starting the digital twin

To start the OPC UA server, open the command prompt, change to the project subdirectory setup\1_digital_twin and type:

  python teststand-opcua-server.py

Step 2: Starting the Lablink config server

The configuration for all Lablink clients (incl. the CSV data for the CSV client) is contained in file setup\2_lablink_config\detb-sim-test-config.db. To start the Lablink config server, simply double-click batch script setup\2_lablink_config\run_config.cmd. Alternatively, you can open a new command prompt, change to the project subdirectory setup\2_lablink_config and type the script name.

NOTE: Once the server is running, you can view the available configurations in a web browser via http://localhost:10101.

NOTE: A convenient tool for viewing the content of the database file (and editing it for experimenting with the setup) is DB Browser for SQLite.

Step 3: Running the Lablink clients

All batch scripts for running the Lablink clients can be found in project subdirectory setup\3_run_testbed. To start all the Lablink clients, simply double-click batch scriptsetup\3_run_testbed\run_testbed.cmd. Alternatively, you can open a new command prompt (for each script), change to the project subdirectory setup\3_run_testbed and type the script name.

NOTE: You can start the Lablink clients in arbitrary order.