WP1.2 Coordination Meeting November 13, 2020

Meeting Report WP1.2 ‘Modelica library for MPC’

1. MEETING SUBJECT, DATE

Subject: WP1.2

Date: 13-11-2020

Location: Skype for Business

Minutes taken by: Lieve Helsen (KU Leuven)

2. PARTICIPANTS

3. AGENDA and REPORT

From now on the Monthly Progress Meetings have a duration of 1.5 hour (CET: 17h-18h30) and focus on pre-defined discussion points:

NOVEMBER 13

1. BOPTEST Workshop on BS2021 Conference
2. Controller characterization

DECEMBER 9

1. Outline BOPTEST journal paper
2. Weather uncertainties

JANUARY 20

1. Reporting results from testing

MARCH 1

1. Suggestions for next on-line IBPSA Project 1 Expert Meeting

BOPTEST Workshop on BS2021 Conference

Preliminary discussion Dave & Javier. Aspects treated:

• Title: Introduction to the BOPTEST framework for testing and benchmarking advanced controllers.

• Costs

  • Once estimate available, Lieve shares this with Dave
  • Sponsorship from Engie available

• Target public: as broad as possible (from beginners to advanced control experts), goal is visibility and get to know BOPTEST, we create a slow and fast lane.

• Infrastructure

  • Cloud-based server (remote option should be available so we don’t have to worry about deploying things locally): Kyle checks what we need.
  • Test cases are available on repository
  • Own lap-tops
  • Plugs
  • WiFi
  • Projector
  • Learning outcome: Showing the capabilities of BOPTEST, give them hands-on experience in using it, make then ready to test and benchmark their own controllers for different emulators in the BOPTEST environment.

• Preparation/prerequisites

  • Software (docker, Python) installed beforehand or cloud-based solution (the latter not shared beforehand)
  • Basic programming knowledge
  • Getting-started-tutorial with some code snippets to be made available to prepare

• Content

  • BOPTEST introduction
  • Hands-on tutorial of software (step-by-step working with the software, reporting to the database if progressed far enough)
  • Show an MPC example (do not let them work with MPC themselves) to demonstrate that BOPTEST can handle real problems and this is what we are heading for.
  • Common exercise with RBC – small ‘competition’ with small presentation per group

• Follow-up: Off-line competition afterwards, result to be submitted within 1 month (support should be available – available time slots where people can sign up), and organize an on-line feedback session with recognition for the ‘winner’

• Catering: water/coffee

• Duration: 9h - 12h30 or 14h-17h30

• Number of participants: 5 - 30

• Action:

  • Dave & Javier make proposal
  • Distribute within WP1.2 - 3 days to give comments
  • Submission through BS2021 website

Controller characterization

Dave, Sen, Javier had a meeting about which information we should collect from users to characterize the controllers. A hierarchical decision tree is aimed for. How deep do we want to go in collecting information?

Suggestions:

• People might not be willing to share all information
• Where do we want to use this information for? Defining characteristics that improve the controller performance.
• How correct is the information we get? Mistakes can be there (also not by purpose).
• Set of keywords (scoped labels are exclusive, e.g. number of states < 5, number of states between 5 and 10, ...) you can click for a first layer (information we really want to know), and next layer might have some meta-information.

Action:

• First proposal list to be made by Javier, Dave and Sen
• Distribute within WP1.2
• Gather feedback

Further issues

Emulators current status: