The purpose of the SCHEFF tool is to calculate the thermal performance of CESCI (Individualized Collective Solar Water Heater) installations combining a storage tank located in each dwelling with a surface area of collective solar thermal collectors, to meet domestic hot water needs (DHW).
It is based on a dynamic simulation of the entire installation using simplified models. To facilitate entry of the installation, the configuration of a certain number of components has been carried out automatically from the usual ratios. The SCHEFF calculation tool was developed at INES as part of the SCHEFF project, funded by ADEME (as part of the PACTE ECS), coordinated by Tecsol and involving the partners Viessmann, COFELY and Belenos. It is available to you free of charge.
This calculation tool comes with data libraries:
- 42 meteorological data files covering a large part of French territory,
- a library of solar collectors referenced Solar Keymark or CSTBat (open to upgrades)
- a library of storage tanks with hydraulic or electric back-up
Custom weather data can also be used. Hardware libraries are subject to change over time and can be updated using a simple procedure.
The SCHEFF calculation tool is an executable that can be used under a Windows operating system. It must be installed from the "SCHEFF_setup.exe" executable. By launching it, an installation wizard starts and allows you to install all the necessary files in the desired location and to create shortcuts if necessary.
The program requires 17.9 MB of available disk space. It may have difficulty running if it is not installed in a folder that has full read and write permissions.
In addition, the simulations of this tool are carried out using a MATLAB® calculation kernel. It is not necessary to have the MATLAB® software to use the SCHEFF tool, but it is on the other hand necessary to install the MATLAB Runtime beforehand to be able to carry out the simulations without the complete MATLAB® software.
The runtime version compatible with the SCHEFF tool is version 2013a - 32 bit: it is supplied with the SCHEFF executable (file "MCR_R2013a_win32_installer.exe") but can also be downloaded at www.mathworks.fr/products/compiler/mcr.
- scheff_setup.exe (exe - 6 MB)
- mcr_r2013a_win32_installer.exe (exe - 388 MB)
