# Simulation-Supported Testing of Smart Energy Product Prototypes
###### Abstract  
Smart energy products and services (SEPS) have a key role in the development of smart grids, and testing methods such as co-simulation and scenario-based simulations can be useful tools for evaluating the potential of new SEPS concepts during their early development stages. Three innovative conceptual designs for home energy management products (HEMPs)--a specific category of SEPS--were successfully tested using a simulation environment, validating their operation using simulated production and load profiles. For comparison with reality, end user tests were carried out on two of the HEMP concepts and showed mixed results for achieving more efficient energy use, with one of the concepts reducing energy consumption by 27% and the other increasing it by 25%. The scenario-based simulations provided additional insights on the performance of these products, matching some of the general trends observed during end user tests but failing to sufficiently approximate the observed results. Overall, the presented testing methods successfully evaluated the performance of HEMPs under various use conditions and identified bottlenecks, which could be improved in future designs. It is recommended that in addition to HEMPs, these tests are repeated with different SEPS and energy systems to enhance the robustness of the methods.  
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to understand and interact with [14; 15; 16]. Therefore, there is a need to develop more innovative SEPS that facilitate this role by achieving a better match with user expectations and demands.  
Testing methods such as co-simulation and scenario-based simulations can be useful tools for quickly evaluating the technical functioning and preferred user interaction with a new SEPS design during its early development stages. Co-simulation is a method where several subsystems are simulated independently and then coupled together to analyse the entire system and the interactions between its components. This makes it possible to quickly and accurately model complex, heterogeneous systems by using the simulating tools native to each subsystem [17; 18]. The use of co-simulations for modelling smart energy systems has been explored in the literature [18; 19; 20] but there is still little evidence of its application with SEPS prototypes. Scenario-based simulations, on the other hand, can use existing energy profile datasets to replicate real-life conditions without the need to carry out field tests, although it is important that the used data accurately reflects system behaviour observed in practice. Relevant examples of these tests applied to smart energy systems include the scenario-based simulations found in [21; 22; 23] as well as the user tests presented by [24; 25].  
In this paper, the performance of three home energy management product (HEMP) concepts are tested using a simulation testing environment as well as scenario-based simulations; results from end user tests are presented as well, serving as a validation for the modelled scenarios. The article is structured as follows: Section 2 introduces the methodology followed for each of the proposed testing methods, and the results of each test are presented in Section 3. In Section 4, a discussion on the effectiveness of these methods is presented followed by some conclusions on this study.