Sensitivity of a Lumped-Capacitance Building Thermal Modelling Approach for Energy-Market-Scale Flexibility Studies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

- the originality of the work must be stated clearly in which the authors must demonstrate the new findings which is significantly different from that previously published paper.

- the flow chart representing the exploration of the section 2 is required. More concise is needed also.

- some mathematical model that used  to estimate the cooling load must be indicated to verify the correction of the model. 

- usually, the orientation of buildings is also very important to the thermal load. I am not sure the author considers it for modeling.

- the modeling assumption and boundary conditions setup must be provided associated with the developed mathematical model. 

- discussion of each contours and graphs should be provided together with the results. This means section 3 and 4 should be combined so that more concise is possible. The current form is too long.

- the authors should discuss the results in the way that the useful information provided in this work can apply for engineering design.

 

- More logical of presentation throughput the paper should be considered for convincing the reader.

- more explanation of the modeling setup based on scientific term or mathematical model should be added to this paper. This is so that the paper is more convincing the readers and the correction proof of the results is clearly explained. 
- the parameters used for discussion such as the shading coefficient and solar gain convective fraction must be introduced and determination of them must be explained. Also, the discussion of the usefulness of them must be also discussed.

 

Author Response

Changes in the manuscript addressing the comments of reviewer 1 are highlighted in RED.

"""
The originality of the work must be stated clearly in which the authors must demonstrate the new findings which is significantly different from that previously published paper.
"""

Section `1.2 Contribution` already details the originality and aims of the presented work, and I'm unsure how to state them more clearly. As for the findings, Section 4 (old Section 5) summarises the conclusions, but since most of the results are quite specific to the used modelling approach I feel they cannot be further generalised in good conscience.

"""
The flow chart representing the exploration of the section 2 is required. More concise is needed also.
"""

I'm not sure what is meant by "exploration of the section 2", making this point difficult to address.

"""
Some mathematical model that used  to estimate the cooling load must be indicated to verify the correction of the model. 
"""

I'm hesitant to present excessive details about the model here, as I fear it would bloat the manuscript. All of the modelling details are presented in the available online documentation (ref 40 in the manuscript, https://vttresearch.github.io/ArchetypeBuildingModel), and while I could replicate the core equations here, I fear doing so would only raise more questions about how each parameter is calculated (e.g. solar heat gains or heat transfer coefficients between the model nodes). This in turn, would require replicating more and more parts of the online documentation in the manuscript, which I feel is not necessary and would only make the manuscript longer without additional value.

If you insist on me replicating model details from the online documentation, I suppose I could do it e.g. in an appendix if necessary. That way the flow of the text wouldn't suffer from excessive mathematical details.

Slightly revised Section 2.1 to better point interested readers to the relevant parts of the ArchetypeBuildingModel online documentation.

"""
Usually, the orientation of buildings is also very important to the thermal load. I am not sure the author considers it for modeling.
"""

Orientation of the windows is considered when calculating solar heat gains through them, which is briefly mentioned in the third paragraph of Section 2.1 and the second paragraph of Section 3.2. However, calculations for the solar heat gains through the opaque parts of the building envelope are simplified such that the orientation is not considered. These details can be found in the available online documentation of the used modelling tool ArchetypeBuildingModel.jl (ref 40 in the manuscript, https://vttresearch.github.io/ArchetypeBuildingModel), and I feel going into this much detail would be excessive here.

"""
The modeling assumption and boundary conditions setup must be provided associated with the developed mathematical model.
"""

I'm not completely sure what is meant here. As mentioned above, most of the modelling details in ArchetypeBuildingModel.jl are not discussed in the manuscript, as proper explanation of the inner workings of the model would require several pages worth of additional content. As mentioned in Section 2.1., modelling details can be found in the available online documentation (ref 40 in the manuscript, https://vttresearch.github.io/ArchetypeBuildingModel).

"""
Discussion of each contours and graphs should be provided together with the results. This means section 3 and 4 should be combined so that more concise is possible. The current form is too long.
"""

Combined and revised the results and discussion sections to hopefully better organize the paper.

"""
The authors should discuss the results in the way that the useful information provided in this work can apply for engineering design.
"""

As explained in Section 1.2., the point of this work was to examine the suitability and sensitivity of a simplified building energy modelling approach for large-scale energy system integration studies. As such, the modelling approach used in ArchetypeBuildingModel.jl is simplified by a great deal and not suitable for detailed engineering design. Details related to engineering design should be studied with more accurate models, such as the white-box building simulation models discussed in Section 1.1.

"""
More logical of presentation throughput the paper should be considered for convincing the reader.
"""

I'm not sure what is meant here, making it difficult to address properly. I can only hope the changes based on the previous comments help address this one as well.

"""
More explanation of the modeling setup based on scientific term or mathematical model should be added to this paper. This is so that the paper is more convincing the readers and the correction proof of the results is clearly explained.
"""

As mentioned before, the modelling details for ArchetypeBuildingModel.jl can be found in the available online documentation (ref 40 in the manuscript, https://vttresearch.github.io/ArchetypeBuildingModel). I feel there is no point in reproducing its contents here.

"""
The parameters used for discussion such as the shading coefficient and solar gain convective fraction must be introduced and determination of them must be explained. Also, the discussion of the usefulness of them must be also discussed.
"""

These parameters are already introduced and explained in Sections 3.1. and 3.2. respectively. As for their "usefulness", they are necessary for the simplified building modelling approach used by ArchetypeBuildingModel.jl and cannot be deduced from the more detailed building simulation models used by comparison. As such, their values need to be either determined either via calibrations with measured or otherwise more detailed data if available, or assumed based on likely robust values.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper introduces an open-source tool for building energy modeling at the building stock level, suitable for large-scale energy-market simulations. Some important points to be made in this study are listed below:

·       State the important results extracted in the abstract.

·       Increase the number of your keywords for better article visibility.

·       Enhance your literature review with relevant works from recent years.

·       Please complete your abbreviation. Some words are not in it, such as CB, SB and...

·       In what weather conditions did your simulation take place?

·       Explain more about figures 4, 5, 7 and 9 and how to extract them.

·       State the formulas and how to calculate RSME.

·       In conclusion, you must remark the main findings in order to highlight why your work is significant for the literature and the main contributions of the paper. Please improve the main findings and the implications of your research. Real implications in industrial activities should be also provided. Besides, the recommendations for future research must be better explained.

Author Response

Changes in the manuscript addressing the comments of reviewer 2 are highlighted in BLUE.

"""
This paper introduces an open-source tool for building energy modeling at the building stock level, suitable for large-scale energy-market simulations. Some important points to be made in this study are listed below:

State the important results extracted in the abstract.
"""

Revised the abstract to include more detail about key results.

"""
Increase the number of your keywords for better article visibility.
"""

The journal "Instructions for Authors" states: "Three to ten pertinent keywords need to be added after the abstract.". Thus we see no need to add more unnecessarily. If there are keywords in particular you feel are missing, we would be interested to consider them.

"""
Enhance your literature review with relevant works from recent years.
"""

To the best knowledge of the authors, the literature review in Section 1.1 already includes all relevant recent research. However, if you have suggestions for important articles you feel we've missed, we would be interested to consider them.

"""
Please complete your abbreviation. Some words are not in it, such as CB, SB and...
"""

Added the used modelled building and node configuration names into the abbreviation list for clarity.

"""
In what weather conditions did your simulation take place?
"""

As mentioned at the end of the second paragraph of Section 3, the simulations used the default Helsinki-Vantaa 2012 reference weather data from IDA ESBO v1.13.

Added a minor clarification on the nature of the weather data used to the second paragraph of Section 3.

"""
Explain more about figures 4, 5, 7 and 9 and how to extract them.
"""

I understand the figures are quite complicated, but I feel like they are explained and discussed quite thoroughly in Sections 3.1 and 3.2, as well as the captions and legends of Figures 4 and 5. Is there anything in particular you feel is missing? Also, I'm not sure what is meant by "extracting" the figures.

"""
State the formulas and how to calculate RSME.
"""

Added an Appendix detailing how the used indicators were calculated, as well as a reference to said appendix from the beginning of Section 3.1.

"""
In conclusion, you must remark the main findings in order to highlight why your work is significant for the literature and the main contributions of the paper. Please improve the main findings and the implications of your research. Real implications in industrial activities should be also provided. Besides, the recommendations for future research must be better explained.
"""

Revised and reorganised the conclusions section to hopefully better highlight the potential real-world implications.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors does not provide adequate response to some comments. This must be revised again.

- the flow chart representing the explanation of the section 2 is required. More concise is needed also. This will make more understanding and convincing the readers.   - some important mathematical model that used to estimate the cooling load must be indicated to verify the correction of the model. But, the authors did not provide them.   -  the modeling assumption and boundary conditions setup must be provided associated with the developed mathematical model. This will indicate the reasonable of the simulated results. But, the authors did not provide them.    I hope the authors can provide better responses to the listed comments. This will improve the manuscript to meet the journal's standards.

 

Author Response

Changes to the manuscript addressing the comments of reviewer 1 are highlighted in RED.

"""
The authors does not provide adequate response to some comments. This must be revised again.

- the flow chart representing the explanation of the section 2 is required. More concise is needed also. This will make more understanding and convincing the readers.
"""

I'm still confused by what exactly is meant by "explanation of the section 2". Can you elaborate on what it is you want a flow chart of more specifically? Do you want a flow chart describing the workflow of the ArchetypeBuildingModel.jl tool? A flow chart for how the IDA ESBO and IDA ICE building models were converted into their ArchetypeBuildingModel.jl equivalents? Or a flow chart for the overall calibration process (although I'd say that's a topic more relevant for "section 3")?

I've included a diagram summarising the overall calibration process, as I feel it might add some value to the paper. Also minor revisions throughout Section 3 to better accommodate the new figure.

"""
- some important mathematical model that used to estimate the cooling load must be indicated to verify the correction of the model. But, the authors did not provide them.
-  the modeling assumption and boundary conditions setup must be provided associated with the developed mathematical model. This will indicate the reasonable of the simulated results. But, the authors did not provide them.
"""

Very well, I've added an appendix explaining the principles behind the heating and cooling demand calculations in ArchetypeBuildingModel.jl. I hope you'll find it sufficient, as explaining the inner workings of ABM.jl would require reproducing several pages worth of content from the online documentation, which I find unnecessary, since that's what the online documentation is for.

"""
I hope the authors can provide better responses to the listed comments. This will improve the manuscript to meet the journal's standards.
"""

I hope I can too.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

it can be accepted in present form.

Author Response

Thanks for the feedback!