Swedish Supriya Mini Soman is the newest PhD student to join the Dig-IT Lab. An Electrical and Electronics Engineer with a dual master’s in Sustainable Energy Systems from KTH and UPC, she will focus on developing a full-scale digital twin for a building, in collaboration with industry partners.
Hello Supriya, what is your PhD project about?
In my PhD project, I will develop a full-scale digital twin for a grid-connected building. This involves enabling bidirectional power flow, allowing the building to interact with the power grid in real time. Through continuous interaction between the physical building and its digital twin, it will be possible to enhance overall energy efficiency and explore opportunities in demand response and distributed energy generation.
The goal is to expand the initial model into a comprehensive framework applicable to multifamily buildings, including the capability to sell surplus power back to the grid. The model will be validated using historical and real-time data to ensure accuracy and reliability.
Why did you choose this project?
During my master’s, I focused on sustainable data centers, modeling cooling demand and assessing solar-powered absorption chillers. I collaborated with experts from Schneider and ABB, which highlighted the potential of digital twins in transforming the building and construction industry by enabling digital building decarbonisation while improving energy efficiency. The broad scope and applicability of digital twins motivated me to pursue this PhD project. My master’s thesis also involved working with IDA ICE software, which will play a key role in my PhD research.
How can your research be applied in the management of buildings?
I believe the real-time data exchange enabled by digital twins can significantly improve the understanding of building dynamics, offering a major advantage over traditional static building modeling tools. Digital twins allow us to study and optimise various strategies for building and grid management, such as smart sensing, energy storage, smart metering, grid flexibility, and distributed energy resource optimisation.
What will your collaboration with industry look like?
EQUA and Einar Mattsson are the industrial partners involved in my project. Our collaboration focuses on developing a user-friendly digital twin for multifamily buildings to assist technicians and property owners with operations, maintenance, and investment optimisation. This directly contributes to Dig-IT Lab’s mission of transforming buildings into prosumers rather than just consumers.
A key strength of this consortium is the simultaneous involvement of developers, researchers, and end users of the digital twin, ensuring the model meets real-world needs. The experience and knowledge I gain from working with these experts will be invaluable for incorporating critical features into my research while providing ample opportunities for constructive feedback. Additionally, this collaboration will offer me valuable insights into how digital twins are developed and integrated into the real-world construction and building industries.
Industry partners’ perspectives
Markus Högberg from EQUA on the collaboration:
Having Supriya sitting together with our team working on the development of digital twin functionality enables rapid development cycles, where new features can be instantly evaluated in the context of her research. This will help guide the roadmap for development to ensure that the enabling features for achieving the project’s objectives are prioritised. We look forward to a fruitful collaboration resulting in new knowledge, methods and strategies contributing to user-friendly tools for efficient building operation based on EQUA simulation technology.
Mikael Dimadis from Einar Mattsson on the collaboration:
Together with Supriya Mini Soman and the team from KTH and Markus Högberg and his team from EQUA, we look forward to achieving concrete results when developing a full-scale digital twin in our residential property in Stockholm. We know IDA-ICE software is already a very powerful tool for e.g. energy simulation etc. And know the task is to develop a full-scale digital twin that can assist our property technicians and managers with operations, maintenance, and investment optimisation. This is a concrete example of how accelerating digitalisation will lead to more efficient management in both the short and long term.