TESS Libraries

TESS Component Library Package

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Through our consulting projects at TESS, we have developed well over 500 TRNSYS components. The components contained in these libraries represent the best of our in-house Types. Each of the component libraries comes with a TRNSYS Model File (*.tmf) to use in the Simulation Studio interface, source code, documentation, and an example TRNSYS Project (*.tpf) that demonstrates typical uses of the component models found in that library. With the release of the TESS Libraries version 18, nearly 100 new models have been added from the previous version (v17). The following are the 14 available TESS Component Libraries for Trnsys18.

Application Components

The TESS Applications Library is an assortment of scheduling and setpoint applications that use the TRNSYS Simulation Studio plugin feature. These components are extremely useful for creating daily, weekly, monthly schedules, normalized occupancy, lighting, or equipment schedules, and setpoints for thermostats.


Cogeneration (CHP) Components

The TESS Cogeneration (also known as the Combined Heat and Power or CHP) Library features many steam system components: pumps, valves, superheaters, desuperheaters, turbines, etc.. These components may be used to simulate different cogeneration or trigeneration systems at different scales. TESS has used them to simulate the thermodynamics of the beer brewing process and to model a biomass power plant.


Controller Components

The TESS Controllers Library contains numerous controllers for practically any TRNSYS simulation. Components range from a simple thermostat controller to a complex multi-stage differential controller with minimum on and off times, and from a tempering valve controller to an outside air reset controller.


Electrical Components

The TESS Electrical Library has components for solar photovoltaic (PV) and combined solar thermal (PVT) modeling in TRNSYS. The library includes simple PV models, PVT models, building integrated PV models, a PV array shading component, an equipment outage component, lighting controls and a lithium-ion battery model.


Geothermal Heat Pump (GHP) Components

The TESS GHP Library is not only host to extensive ground heat exchanger models (horizontal multi-layer ground heat exchanger, and the vertical heat exchanger), but also to buried single and double pipes. The ground heat exchanger models are now multi-instance compatible so that more than one field can be included in a simulation.


Ground Coupling Components

The TESS Ground Coupling Library features components that compute the energy transfer between an object (building slabs, basements, buried thermal storage tanks, etc.) and the surrounding ground.


High Temperature Solar Components

Many of the models in the standard TRNSYS and TESS Solar Collector Libraries assume that the specific heat of the collector's working fluid is constant. This assumption, while appropriate for low temperature applications is not appropriate for high temperature collectors or for the heat transfer fluids that they typically employ. The TESS High Temperature Solar Library contains components that have temperature dependent thermophysical fluid properties such as a parabolic trough collector, valves, pumps, expansion tanks, and pipes.


HVAC Equipment Components

With nearly 90 components, the TESS HVAC Library is a far ranging group of components for modeling anything related to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning of buildings. Residential, commercial, and industrial HVAC components are all included.


Hydronics Components

The TESS Hydronics Library contains a variety of fans, pumps, valves, plenums, duct and pipe components that are essential for working with fluid loops in a TRNSYS simulation.


Loads and Structures Components

The TESS Loads and Structures Library contains alternatives to the standard TRNSYS building model including a synthetic building (load curve generator), a simple multizone building, and methods for imposing precalculated building loads (generated by TRNSYS or by other software) onto a TRNSYS system or plant simulation. New with version 18 is an adaptive comfort calculator and an evapotranspiration model that can be useful in modeling greenhouses.


Optimization Components

The TESS Optimization Library (also known as TRNOPT) is a tool that couples the TRNSYS simulation with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's GenOpt program for the minimization of a cost or error function. TRNOPT may also be used to calibrate your simulation results to the data from the actual system.


Solar Collector Components

The TESS Solar Library contains 18 different solar collector components. From different theoretical and test-based collectors to collectors with different glazings, the TESS Solar Library has many to choose from.


Storage Tank Components

In addition to the popular vertical cylindrical storage tank, the TESS Storage Tank Library also contains spherical, rectangular, horizontally cylindrical, and inverted cone tank models. It also features a tank-in-tank mode, a wrap-around heat exchanger tank, aquastats, a heat pump water heater, and a zip water heater.


Utility Components

The TESS Utility Library is a collection of useful components for TRNSYS simulations including random number generators, water draw profiles, an "event triggered" printer, a wind speed calculator, an economics routine, building infiltration models and many more.