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TESSA version history

TESSA v6.1 Series

The v6.1 release series refines TESSA's multi-energy modeling capabilities, introduces flexible licensing and administrative controls, and expands international data coverage.

v6.1.6

  • EnergyPlus Weather (.epw) climate file upload: Upload custom local climate files directly in the standard EnergyPlus Weather format, complementing existing tabular inputs. Weather station metadata and observation periods are detected automatically.
  • Interactive feature & building property editor: View and edit custom attributes and user-imported data fields directly within the map layer inspector, providing full control over building-specific parameters.
  • On-map pipe diameter labels: Display nominal pipe diameters (DN) directly on the map alongside building labels to immediately inspect network sizing results.
  • Enhanced GIS geometry import: Seamlessly import network geometry containing multi-part lines and elevation data from external GIS tools without manual pre-processing.

v6.1.4 & v6.1.5

  • Cooling-only load curve upload: Upload dedicated 8760-hour cooling load profiles for districts or individual buildings, ensuring accurate sizing for cooling-dominated and seasonal systems.
  • International building demand models: Expanded archetypes incorporating European building stock datasets (including the UK via TABULA), enabling rapid demand modeling outside Switzerland.
  • Dedicated Project Manager role: Team members can create, organize, and manage project scenarios without requiring full organization-level administrator privileges.
  • Cross-project scenario comparison: Compare design variants across different organizational projects with unified permission checks.

v6.1.3

  • Organization license & seat management: Streamlined administration for fixed and floating team licenses, with clear visibility into available datasets and user allocation.
  • Automated borehole drilling permit checks: Quickly evaluate local drilling suitability, regulatory constraints, and permit prerequisites directly from the borehole field inspector.
  • Configurable booster heat pump billing boundaries: Define whether thermal energy delivery is accounted for before or after building booster heat pumps in ambient networks.
  • Refined energy & financial metrics: Delivered thermal energy accounting strictly reflects metered energy supplied to buildings, paired with updated regional tariff benchmarks for realistic feasibility evaluations.

v6.1.0 & v6.1.1

  • Dedicated borehole ground regeneration modeling: Ground regeneration is modeled as an independent thermal resource with dedicated annual supply curves and explicit tracking on Sankey diagrams.
  • Target IRR tariff solver: Automatically back-calculate the required heat selling price (€/MWh or CHF/MWh) needed to hit an organization's target Internal Rate of Return (IRR).
  • Separated Capex and O&M financial boundaries: Clear cost categorization between central production plants, distribution network piping, booster heat pumps, and customer substations.
  • Advanced district & building filtering: Powerful spatial and attribute filters allowing planners to isolate building subsets and spawn new scenario variants in one step.
  • High-availability platform updates: System upgrades deploy seamlessly in the background, ensuring continuous access during active planning sessions.

TESSA v6.0 — Custom Datasets, Optimization & Physics-Based Losses

TESSA v6.0 represents a major milestone in planning autonomy, introducing project-specific GIS datasets, measured load profile integration, and automated routing optimizers.

  • Custom project building & street datasets: Import your own building footprints and road graphs via OpenStreetMap or custom GIS uploads, enabling project design anywhere in the world alongside official Swiss registers (RegBL, swisstopo).
  • Individual building demand curves: Upload measured 8760-hour meter readings for individual buildings. Real metered consumption is blended with simulated archetype demand across the rest of the district for unmatched accuracy.
  • Substation & connection investment modeling: Automatically compute detailed capital expenditures for service connections and building substations (fixed and capacity-dependent CapEx), feeding directly into financial cash flows.
  • Rebuilt Financial Analysis workspace: Multi-tab financial reports with live KPI updates, customizable Capex/Opex line items, and interactive toggles to include or exclude specific investment components.
  • AI-driven building selection optimizer: Algorithmic selection using prize-collecting Steiner tree optimization on road graphs to identify the most financially attractive buildings to connect.
  • Street-aware layout optimization: Automated network routing that searches branching street-following topologies to deliver minimal pipe lengths and excavation costs.
  • Physics-based pipe heat loss simulation: Temperature-dependent thermal loss simulation for buried pre-insulated pipes (EN 253 series 1/2/3, high-performance PIR, and uninsulated anergy lines), replacing fixed-percentage approximations.
  • Scenario activity timeline: Comprehensive audit log displaying who created, modified, simulated, or duplicated scenario variants.
  • Live GIS synchronization: Dynamic KML/KMZ network links allowing GIS software (such as QGIS and Google Earth) to automatically refresh map layers as designs evolve in TESSA.

TESSA v5.x Series — Multi-Energy Systems, Catalogs & Geothermal

The v5.x series expanded TESSA into a comprehensive multi-energy planning suite, introducing centralized cost catalogs, carbon taxation, and aquifer thermal storage.

v5.5

  • Indirect emissions carbon tax: Model annual carbon taxes applied to indirect emissions (such as electricity consumed by central and decentralized heat pumps) across custom time horizons.
  • Unified project catalogs: Centralized management of fuel pricing, thermal source characteristics, network archetypes, and pipe cost libraries across entire projects.

v5.4

  • CAD (DXF) export: Direct export of network layouts, pipe centerlines, and district boundaries to CAD format for civil engineering handoff.
  • Automated heat source dimensioning: Automated capacity sizing of thermal production units against annual load duration curves to achieve specified energy supply shares.
  • Logical multi-criteria building filters: Combine building attributes using boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT) to filter and cluster target consumers.
  • Accelerated geothermal computation: High-performance algorithms enabling rapid simulation of large-scale borehole fields.

v5.3

  • Catalog-driven pipe sizing: Pipe diameter selection driven by user-editable catalog tables with material and installation cost decomposition.
  • Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES): Analytical hydrogeological modeling (Theis method) for open-loop groundwater wells supplying heat pumps or direct cooling.
  • Combined Heat & Power (CHP): Integrated modeling of cogeneration plants producing thermal energy and electricity simultaneously.

v5.0 & v5.1

  • Modernized web interface: High-performance, responsive user interface with streamlined navigation and fluid map interactions.
  • Phased network deployment planning: Plan multi-stage network expansions over 5 to 30 years, modeling progressive capital deployment and revenue growth.
  • Shallow geothermal borehole suite: Sizing, thermal ground response, and regeneration balancing tools tailored for 5th-generation district networks.

TESSA v4.x Series — 5GDHC & Interactive Map Design

  • 5th-Generation District Heating & Cooling (5GDHC): Native support for ambient-temperature loops, simultaneous heating and cooling, and decentralized booster heat pumps.
  • Interactive on-map building editing: Add, adjust, override, and reconfigure building footprints and properties directly on the 3D map.
  • Comprehensive reporting dashboard: High-level visual dashboards summarizing energy balances, technology shares, CO₂ abatement, and economic performance.
  • Enhanced simulation speed: Optimized solvers for rapid annual simulations of complex distribution topologies.

TESSA v3.x Series — Hydraulics, Topology & Substation Engineering

  • Hydraulic pressure calculations: Calculation of absolute pressures, friction losses, and pump head requirements across distribution networks.
  • Booster heat pump engineering: Dedicated modeling of temperature-lifting booster heat pumps with temperature-dependent Coefficient of Performance (COP).
  • Interactive drawing & topology repair: Manual pipe drawing tools with automatic junction snapping and topological error healing.
  • Brownfield network import: Import existing utility GIS pipe assets to evaluate network expansions and retrofits.

TESSA v2.x Series — Relational Simulation Platform

  • Scalable cloud simulation architecture: Background asynchronous processing engine capable of handling municipal-scale network computations.
  • Open-standard GIS interoperability: Comprehensive import and export workflows using standard GeoPackage (GPKG) formats.
  • Automated street-following routing: Minimum-spanning-tree layout generation along road networks connecting building clusters to energy centers.
  • Spatial boundary & exclusion layers: Define study perimeters, right-of-way constraints, and water or rail exclusion zones directly on the map canvas.