MODRIO

Power of exploitation

The project results have been exploited in numerous ways, starting while the project was still in progress. One of the main early achievements was the ability to generate software code for optimising the control of almost one tenth of German electrical power production. Since August 2015, OpenModelica has been used in ABB’s product Optimax Powerfit to generate optimising control code that controls and coordinates about 5000 MW (ca 7.5%) of German electricity production within seconds. This has subsequently been expanded to about 6000 MW. Up to 1500 MW comes from more than 2500 small solar and wind power generators that are coordinated to operate as a single big power plant.

As another example of early achievement, Vattenfall used the results to optimise the start-up of conventional power plants, with an estimated yearly gain of €850k per plant. Such optimisation is being made necessary by the rising share of renewable energy production that forces conventional power plants to manoeuvre more frequently to balance the grid, while complying with all operational constraints in order to meet safety and environmental regulations and minimise system wear.

R&D projects, in particular ITEA ones, helped in creating or enhancing new capabilities from quite low TRL in particular domains to levels which now allow industrial use of these promising technologies

For Dassault-Aviation, MODRIO has enabled many very useful breakthroughs for the design of next-generation aircrafts, in particular the results regarding the modelling of requirements and system architecture, associated with fast multi-core simulations, multi-mode modelling of system failures and safety analysis. Outputs from ITEA projects brought Dassault-Aviation capabilities allowing working differently, in a more global capabilities to handle complex systems; which takes part of the global (digital) transformation of the company.

In the rail domain, the industrial cooperation partners – Knorr-Bremse and Bombardier Transportation – focused the results on crosswind stability and friction brakes, where there is high economic potential once the brake distance management has become adequately reliable. To raise the potential of brake distance management, Knorr-Bremse uses FMIs extensively to share simulation models between the stakeholders. This makes it possible to simulate the behaviour of the entire system of a passenger train in a very early stage of development. As a consequence, the newly developed braking systems allows Knorr-Bremse to reduce by 30% the hardware tests, which in general are very resource consuming. In addition, the safety margins between trains can be smaller with this braking system and thus more efficient usage of the track and better flow of trains - between 5-14%, depending on the type of traffic - and passengers can be achieved.

In the area of connected driving, the simulation of autonomous vehicles and ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) has been enhanced through a City Traffic Modelica Library. A combined multiple-shooting and collocation optimisation method was further developed for efficient solution of complex optimal control problems by TU Ilmenau. A student team of TU Ilmenau applied this method in the framework of model predictive control to the autonomous driving Audi Q2 cars in connection with another software environment (ADTF), winning 1st prize in the Audi Autonomous Driving Cup 2017 and 3rd prize in 2018.

In the building sector, EQUA Simulation AB created the only building monitoring tool (the IDA ICE Building Tracker) that leverages the information collected by the numerous sensors installed in modern buildings to provide unique diagnostic capabilities. Many, very diverse, customers already have shown strong interest in the IDA ICE Building Tracker. Currently, EQUA Simulation AB is in the process of building prototype projects; discussions are ongoing for an office building in Austria, an airport in Germany, and a multi-family residential building in Sweden.

From the start of the Modelica initiative, DLR-SR has used Modelica models directly in controllers, with the considerable benefit that non-linear models of the systems can be used in the controllers with acceptable design effort, enabling the controllers potentially to cover large operating regions. A key technique here is the so-called inverse model approach, where an inverted non-linear plant model is used in the control system. Modelica, with Modelica tools, allows such systems to be described and handled in a simulation environment. However, generating code from Modelica models on controller hardware is not simple. The MODRIO project now makes this technique also available for non-specialists.

These different exploitation examples show how the MODRIO framework can accommodate the different stakeholders of the European energy system, paving the way for closer cooperation to tackle the challenges of the energy transition.