Innovative workflow for analysing centralised thermal plant in Northshore Brisbane

Northshore Brisbane is the largest waterfront urban renewal project in Queensland, spanning over 100 hectares and projected to house more than 25,000 residents. It will host the Athlete Village for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, before transforming into a vibrant mixed-use precinct. To meet ambitious energy-efficiency targets, it aims to implement a centralised thermal plant with heat recovery. Unfortunately, many existing workflows for analysing centralised thermal plants have limitations that make them unsuitable for this project. Many workflows do not model the entire precinct but extrapolate data from a few baseline buildings, which is inadequate for a precinct with diverse building massing, usage, and operating profiles. Additionally, most workflows separate heating and cooling generation, which complicates the analysis for a system that provides both heating and cooling with heat recovery capabilities.

To address these limitations, a new workflow has been developed. This approach decouples the simulation and utilises two powerful tools at different stages of the analysis. Grasshopper is employed to simulate the thermal energy data of the entire precinct with high granularity and completeness. Meanwhile, IESVE is used to model innovative and flexible systems for the centralized thermal plants, including those with heat recovery components. The interlinking of these software tools is crucial to maximise their strengths and create a unified output. By adopting this workflow, precincts can more accurately assess the benefits and feasibility of implementing such a system, offering greater flexibility in system type implementation and higher confidence in the results.