An Add-in Tool for BIM-Based Electrical Load Forecast for Multi-building Microgrid Design

For effective multi-building smart microgrid design and optimization, it is necessary to gather sufficient and accurate computational data that too at the early design stage of projects. The building level electric energy demand forecast is one of the significant steps for suitable generation planning and to formulate strategies for demand response. The adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) in construction such as building information modelling (BIM) added significant values by improving productivity and by providing digital and object-oriented data-rich realistic integrated models for engineering calculations and coordination. This paper discusses the development of an add-in tool as an Autodesk Revit 2017 plug-in application for the BIM-based load forecast estimation to be used for the electrical design of multi-building microgrids. The calculation proceeds by summing up the individual forecasts of each elementary load components by following a simplified bottom-up approach. The proposed tool is capable of generating realistic electrical load profile for a selected time period on an hourly basis.