IDEAS

A Modelica model library for integrated building or district energy simulations.
https://github.com/open-ideas/IDEAS

Category: Consumption
Sub Category: Buildings and Heating

Keywords from Contributors

modelica modelica-library buildings bim ibpsa mpc power-grid control energy-efficiency ernergy

Last synced: 31 minutes ago
JSON representation

Repository metadata

Modelica library allowing simultaneous transient simulation of thermal and electrical systems at both building and feeder level.

Host: GitHub
URL: https://github.com/open-ideas/IDEAS
Owner: open-ideas
Created: 2014-02-18T13:02:55.000Z (almost 12 years ago)
Default Branch: master
Last Pushed: 2025-10-02T08:16:00.000Z (3 months ago)
Last Synced: 2025-10-26T18:48:36.773Z (2 months ago)
Language: Modelica
Homepage:
Size: 151 MB
Stars: 151
Watchers: 15
Forks: 64
Open Issues: 26
Releases: 7
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md

IDEAS is a Modelica library for Integrated District Energy Assessment Simulations.
This free and open-source library enables simultaneous transient simulation of integrated thermal and electrical energy systems
including buildings at both individual (building) and collective (district) level.

The IDEAS library extends from the Modelica IBPSA library and has a particular focus
on the development of detailed building models. It is one of the four sister libraries that extend from the core Modelica IBPSA
library, alongside AixLib, Modelica Buildings,
and BuildingSystems.

License

IDEAS is licensed by KU Leuven and 3E under a
BSD 3 license.

Community and contributions

We love to hear what you are using IDEAS for. You are welcome to open an issue on GitHub or contact the development team via
email to share your feedback. If you like our library, you can support IDEAS by starring it at the top right of our Github page.
Bug reports and feature suggestions can be submitted as GitHub issues, and
contributions in the form of pull requests are highly encouraged. Before submitting
a pull request, please consult the the IDEAS
Style Guide and Conventions
to ensure consistency with the project's conventions.

The IDEAS library was originally developed by KU Leuven and 3E, and is currently developed and maintained by
the Thermal Systems Simulation (The SySi) research group of KU Leuven.
The library includes significant contributions by the Building Physics and Sustainable Design Section
of KU Leuven, the Building Physics Research Group
of UGent, IBPSA project 1, IEA EBC Annex 60 and the
Electrical Energy Systems and Applications Section of KU Leuven.

Tool support

IDEAS is largely compliant with the Modelica Specification, and is therefore, in
principle, compatible with any simulation tool that supports this standard, such as Dymola or OpenModelica. However, as
IDEAS is primarily developed and maintained in Dymola, and the unit testing framework is exclusively implemented in Dymola,
certain compatibility issues with alternative tools may arise. Users are encouraged to report any deviations from the Modelica
specification or tool-specific issues so that these can be addressed in future updates.

Unit testing

Unit testing is performed using Dymola in combination with BuildingsPy. Automated unit tests are executed via GitHub Actions,
utilising a self-hosted runner maintained by KU Leuven. Further information on the IDEAS unit testing framework is available
on the IDEAS Wiki.

Getting started

Two tutorials are provided in IDEAS.Examples.Tutorial, serving as demonstrations cases of how the IDEAS library
can be used.

IDEAS.Examples.Tutorial.SimpleHouse contains examples with step-by-step instructions for how to build a system
model for a simple house with a heating system, ventilation, and weather boundary conditions. This tutorial does not use the
detailed IDEAS building envelope components, but instead includes a very simple Resistance-Capacitance (RC) model.
IDEAS.Examples.Tutorial.DetailedHouse contains examples with step-by-step instructions for how to build a system
model for an office building (using the detailed building envelope component models within IDEAS.Buildings) with occupants, a
radiator heating system connected to a heat pump, and a ventilation system.

Furthermore,

IDEAS.Buildings.Examples and IDEAS.Buildings.Components.Examples contain examples focussing on the
building models, including individual features, developed in this library.
IDEAS.Examples.IBPSA collects some models used in BOPTEST.
IDEAS.Examples.PPD12 is an example model of a terraced house, including a heating and ventilation system.
IDEAS.Examples.TwinHouses is a model of the Holzkirchen twin house, used in a validation experiment.

See the documentation sections of the respective packages and models for more information.

Citing IDEAS

Please cite IDEAS using the reference provided below.

@article{Jorissen2018ideas,  
author = {Jorissen, Filip and Reynders, Glenn and Baetens, Ruben and Picard, Damien and Saelens, Dirk and Helsen, Lieve},  
journal = {Journal of Building Performance Simulation},    
title = {{Implementation and Verification of the IDEAS Building Energy Simulation Library}},  
volume = {11},
issue = {6},  
pages = {669-688},
doi={10.1080/19401493.2018.1428361},  
year = {2018}  
}

Release history

IDEAS v4.0.0 was released on August 20, 2025.
Detailed release notes are available within the library under the following link:
ReleaseNotes.
Notes for the previous releases notes can also be found there.

Documentation

The IDEAS library offers comprehensive documentation. Each model includes a dedicated documentation section explaining its implementation details.
Many models also reference relevant scientific papers. An overview of the key reference papers is provided in the
References section of the
User's Guide.

Applications of IDEAS

IDEAS is widly used across various applications. To gain an overview of how the library has been applied, please consult the
citations of the reference paper.

Owner metadata

Name: OpenIDEAS
Login: open-ideas
Email:
Kind: organization
Description: An open framework for integrated building and district energy simulations
Website:
Location: Belgium
Twitter:
Company:
Icon url: https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/5467967?v=4
Repositories: 5
Last ynced at: 2024-03-27T11:55:26.701Z
Profile URL: https://github.com/open-ideas

GitHub Events

Total

Create event: 34
Issues event: 48
Watch event: 16
Delete event: 27
Issue comment event: 157
Push event: 173
Gollum event: 12
Pull request event: 78
Pull request review event: 152
Pull request review comment event: 253
Fork event: 6

Last Year

Create event: 32
Issues event: 46
Watch event: 15
Delete event: 25
Issue comment event: 152
Push event: 121
Gollum event: 12
Pull request review comment event: 251
Pull request review event: 148
Pull request event: 71
Fork event: 4

Committers metadata

Last synced: about 2 months ago

Total Commits: 5,272
Total Committers: 45
Avg Commits per committer: 117.156
Development Distribution Score (DDS): 0.569

Commits in past year: 781
Committers in past year: 8
Avg Commits per committer in past year: 97.625
Development Distribution Score (DDS) in past year: 0.668

Name	Email	Commits
Filip Jorissen	f**n@k**e	2270
rubenbaetens	r**s@g**m	319
DaP	d**d@m**e	310
jelgerjansen	j**n@h**m	288
Lucas Verleyen	l**n@k**e	284
kldjonge	K**e@U**e	273
u0169319	l**s@k**e	259
roel	r**k@m**e	221
rubae	r**s@b**e	187
Javier Arroyo	j**o@k**e	174
annadellisola	a**a@k**e	85
arnoutaertgeerts	a**s@g**m	74
Damien Picard	d**d@k**e	70
rubenbaetens	r**s@g**m	61
Iago	i**a@k**e	54
Louis	1****r	41
Juan Van Roy	v**n@g**m	29
Ian Beausoleil-Morrison	I**n@c**a	27
GlennReynders	g**s@k**e	27
Bart	b**n@g**m	26
Christina Pro	c**i@b**e	22
Bart Verbruggen	B**n@e**e	19
GlennReynders	g**s@g**m	18
Jaap Neven	j**n@v**e	17
roel	u**5@.**e	16
Filip Jorissen	f**n@k**e	16
Bram van der Heijde	b**e@k**e	14
cprotopa	C**i@b**e	9
David Blum	d**m@l**v	8
u0112721	u**1@s**e	8
and 15 more...

Committer domains:

Issue and Pull Request metadata

Last synced: 2 months ago

Total issues: 710
Total pull requests: 805
Average time to close issues: 4 months
Average time to close pull requests: 22 days
Total issue authors: 58
Total pull request authors: 29
Average comments per issue: 3.19
Average comments per pull request: 2.02
Merged pull request: 647
Bot issues: 0
Bot pull requests: 0

Past year issues: 31
Past year pull requests: 85
Past year average time to close issues: about 1 month
Past year average time to close pull requests: 22 days
Past year issue authors: 9
Past year pull request authors: 8
Past year average comments per issue: 1.13
Past year average comments per pull request: 1.16
Past year merged pull request: 46
Past year bot issues: 0
Past year bot pull requests: 0

More stats: https://issues.ecosyste.ms/repositories/lookup?url=https://github.com/open-ideas/IDEAS

Top Issue Authors

Mathadon (365)
damienpicard (85)
rubenbaetens (75)
jelgerjansen (20)
icupeiro (20)
lucasverleyen (14)
saroele (13)
JavierArroyoBastida (12)
kldjonge (10)
vanroyj (8)
bramvdh91 (7)
cprotopa (6)
sohertz (4)
dhblum (4)
maltelenz (4)

Top Pull Request Authors

Mathadon (440)
damienpicard (73)
rubenbaetens (58)
jelgerjansen (44)
lucasverleyen (37)
kldjonge (31)
JavierArroyoBastida (18)
icupeiro (16)
GlennReynders (10)
saroele (8)
vanroyj (8)
LoneMeertens (7)
arnoutaertgeerts (7)
annadellisola (7)
tbeu (7)

Top Issue Labels

feature (99)
bug (91)
project 1 (21)
stale (15)
Feature (12)
Stale (11)
non-backward compatible (6)
Warning (5)
TD (5)
efficiency (2)
Bug (2)
IBPSA (2)
analysis (1)
Documentation (1)
Analysis (1)

Top Pull Request Labels

bug (16)
feature (10)
project 1 (7)

Package metadata

Total packages: 2
Total downloads: unknown
Total dependent packages: 0 (may contain duplicates)
Total dependent repositories: 0 (may contain duplicates)
Total versions: 14

proxy.golang.org: github.com/open-ideas/ideas

Homepage:
Documentation: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/open-ideas/ideas#section-documentation
Licenses:
Latest release: v4.0.0+incompatible (published 4 months ago)
Last Synced: 2025-10-29T20:21:43.332Z (about 2 months ago)
Versions: 7
Dependent Packages: 0
Dependent Repositories: 0
Rankings:
- Dependent packages count: 5.395%
- Average: 5.576%
- Dependent repos count: 5.758%

proxy.golang.org: github.com/open-ideas/IDEAS

Homepage:
Documentation: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/open-ideas/IDEAS#section-documentation
Licenses:
Latest release: v4.0.0+incompatible (published 4 months ago)
Last Synced: 2025-10-29T20:21:43.755Z (about 2 months ago)
Versions: 7
Dependent Packages: 0
Dependent Repositories: 0
Rankings:
- Dependent packages count: 5.395%
- Average: 5.576%
- Dependent repos count: 5.758%

Dependencies

.github/workflows/github-actions.yml actions

actions/checkout v3 composite

IDEAS/Resources/Scripts/tests/Dockerfile docker

ubuntu 20.04 build

Score: -Infinity

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