Digital twins for secure thermal energy storage in building

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to explore the role of the safe and optimal scheduling of thermal energy storage systems in intelligent buildings in promoting sustainable economic development under Digital Twins (DTs) technology. Phase Change Material (PCM) has high energy density, constant temperature storage, small footprint, and long service life. Here, PCM is first placed in the indoor building structure, and the DTs technology is introduced. In the development of intelligent buildings, the data generated by the energy storage system of intelligent buildings in the real space can be mapped to the virtual space in real time for simultaneous analysis. In addition, the PCM wall structure and thermal network DTs model are designed for the intelligent building. In addition, the PCW structure is used to build a thermal energy storage and dispatch model of the smart thermoelectric building based on DTs. Finally, the model is evaluated and analyzed experimentally. The analysis of system optimization power under different schemes indicates that the scheduling operation strategy of thermal energy storage of building walls can avoid overcharging or over-discharging batteries in the microgrid and reduce battery power consumption. Besides, the building wall energy storage capacity is always in the range of 0.2 ∼ 0.8 on the all-weather scale. Moreover, the model constructed here achieves significantly lower economic costs, environmental costs, and energy costs and a better energy-saving effect than the existing model. The model built here can serve as experimental reference for further digital energy storage in intelligent buildings and comprehensive energy utilization because of its superior safety performance and lower consumption.