Overview
EINSTEIN is a Tool & Methodology for the design of energy efficient (thermal) energy supply systems, both as retrofit in existing systems and for green field design.
The major modules of EINSTEIN are providing support for:
- Data collection and screening (consistency and completeness checking)
- Assisted design of appropriate heating and cooling supply and heat recovery systems: conceptual design and pre-dimensioning.
- Energy, economic and environmental evaluation, including comparative analysis of different options
- Structured reporting
Initially EINSTEIN has been design for its use in industrial heating and cooling. Nevertheless it can be successfully applied also for any other non-industrial use case with medium to large size heating and cooling demands such as big buildings, district heating and cooling networks etc.
In the focus of EINSTEIN is thermal energy supply, but an efficient design of heating and cooling design requires sector integration including including distributed power generation (PV, CHP) and conversion of electricity to heat and cooling (heat pumps, power-to-heat) or to fuels (power-to-gas).
EINSTEIN incorporates modules for dynamic system simulation and for pinch analysis and optimisation of heat exchanger networks, but it’s objective is not to compete with specialised tools for this purpose. The objective and distinctive feature of EINSTEIN is integrating these and other modules into a whole package with the focus on ease of use for quick feasibility analysis and system (pre-)design.
The History of the EINSTEIN project
EINSTEIN has been developed since 2007 in a collaboration of more than 20 institutes and companies in the Framework of the European projects EINSTEIN (2007-2009), EINSTEIN-II (2010-2012), i-ThERM (2015-2020) and several national and regional projects in Spain, Catalonia and Austria. Apart from the development of the methodology and the tool-kit, within these projects more than 500 energy auditors have been trained in 13 European countries and several other countries world-wide.