Prototype of an open testbed for the lab validation of smart applications of district heating substations

The digitalization of the heat sector poses new challenges for the development of new components and the deployment of automation and control solutions. Even though the enabling technologies are well understood on the component level, their effects on the system level are still subject of investigations. Within this context, the present work introduces the concept and prototype implementation of a testbed for the lab validation of smart applications in thermal networks. The testbed focuses specifically on district heating substations controlled remotely by the network operator for optimizing the system performance. Particular attention was paid to the open design of the testbed, through using and further developing open standards and open source software. A preliminary assessment of the performance of the testbed is presented based on results of an example application, where the digital twin of a substation was successfully coupled in real-time with a simulated district heating network and a heat consumer. The resulting testbed enables the integration of lab hardware and simulation models into an open environment for the evaluation of digitalization solutions for thermal networks on the system level.