Components Workflow

Understanding components is an essential part of ETHOS.HiSim. For the basic simulations, the requirements to handle components are twofold:

• create an Component object to be implemented within the setup function

• connect Component objects among themselves.

The snippets showed here are found in the system_setup file basic_household.py.

Create a Component Object

All the implemented Component classes are implemented in directory hisim/components. The Python modules are named after the corresponded class, but it might have supplementary classes implemented, as such, the module battery.py has the Battery class implemented in it along with BatteryController.

In the following example, the object component PVSystem (for Photovoltaic System) from setup function setup_function is explored. The class PVSystem is found under the directory hisim/components in module pvs.py. To create an object, the module pvs.py has to be imported, and the required parameters from the class constructor have to be passed in the instantiation, as shown in the following snippet.

my_photovoltaic_system = pvs.PVSystem(location=location,
                                      power=power,
                                      load_module_data=load_module_data,
                                      module_name=module_name,
                                      integrateInverter=integrateInverter,
                                      inverter_name=inverter_name,
                                      sim_params=my_sim_params)

Connect Component Objects

To pass and receive information, fluxes and energy among the components during the simulation, it is necessary to connect them. The class Component as well as all its children have the method connect_input to connect to previously instantiated Components objects. The inputs to be connected can be found in the implementation as ComponentInput attributes. For example, in the Component class PVSystem, the following ComponentInput is passed as an attribute of the class:

self.DNIC : cp.ComponentInput = self.add_input(self.ComponentName,
                                            self.DirectNormalIrradiance,
                                            lt.LoadTypes.Irradiance,
                                            lt.Units.Wm2,
                                            True)

This means, it is necessary to find a Component class that has an ComponentOutput defined as DirectNormalIrradiance. This is the case for the class Weather in module weather.py.

The method connect_input requires three parameters:

• input_fieldname: ComponentInput from your current Component object.

• src_object_name: name of Component previously instantiated to be connected to.

• src_field_name: ComponentOutput from Component previously instantiated to be connected to.

Take the Component PVSystem object used as an example in the previous section. To connect the DirectNormalIrradiance from the object Component PVSystem to object component Weather, the parameters have to be initialized as:

• input_fieldname: The ComponentInput name is DirectNormalIrradiance, hence my_photovoltaic_system.DirectNormalIrradiance

• src_object_name: name of Component owner of the ComponentOutput to be connected to the object PVSystem is the object class Weather, hence my_weather.ComponentName

• src_field_name: ComponentOutput from the object class Weather is DirectNormalIrradiance, therefore my_weather.DirectNormalIrrandiance.

my_photovoltaic_system.connect_input(my_photovoltaic_system.DirectNormalIrradiance,
                                     my_weather.ComponentName,
                                     my_weather.DirectNormalIrradiance)

The names of ComponentInput and ComponentOutput do not have to be necessarily the same.