1. Installation

1.1. Docker container

We include a Dockerfile for installing all dependencies and setting up the image for running Sinergym.

By default, Dockerfile will do pip install -e .[extras], if you want to install a different setup, you will have to do in root repository:

$ docker build -t <tag_name> --build-arg SINERGYM_EXTRAS=[<setup_tag(s)>] .

For example, if you want a container with only documentation libraries and testing:

$ docker build -t example1/sinergym:latest --build-arg SINERGYM_EXTRAS=[doc,test] .

On the other hand, if you don’t want any extra library, it’s necessary to write an empty value like this:

$ docker build -t example1/sinergym:latest --build-arg SINERGYM_EXTRAS= .

Note

You can install directly our container from Docker Hub repository, all releases of this project are there.

Note

If you use Visual Studio Code, by simply opening the root directory and clicking on the pop-up button Reopen in container, all the dependencies will be installed automatically and you will be able to run Sinergym in an isolated environment. For more information about how to use this functionality, check VSCode Containers extension documentation.

1.2. Manual installation

To install Sinergym manually instead of through the container (recommended), follow these steps:

1.2.1. Configure Python environment

First, clone this repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/ugr-sail/sinergym.git
$ cd sinergym

Then, it is recommended to create a virtual environment. You can do so by:

$ sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv virtualenv
$ virtualenv env_sinergym --python=python3.10
$ source env_sinergym/bin/activate
$ pip install -e .[extras]

There are other alternatives like conda environments (recommended). Conda is very comfortable to use and we have a file to configure it automatically:

$ cd sinergym
$ conda env create -f python_environment.yml
$ conda activate sinergym

Now, we have a correct python version with required modules to run Sinergym. Let’s continue with the rest of the programs that are needed outside of Python to run the simulations:

1.2.2. Install EnergyPlus 9.5.0

Install EnergyPlus. Currently it has been update compatibility to 9.5.0 and it has been tested, but code may also work with other versions. Sinergym ensure this support:

Sinergym Version	EnergyPlus version
1.0.0 or before	8.6.0
1.1.0 or later	9.5.0

Other combination may works, but they don’t have been tested.

Follow the instructions here and install it for Linux (only Ubuntu is supported by us). Choose any location to install the software. Once installed, a folder called Energyplus-9-5-0 should appear in the selected location.

1.2.3. Install BCVTB software

Follow the instructions here for installing BCVTB software. Another option is to copy the bcvtb folder from this repository.

1.2.4. Set environment variables

Two environment variables must be set: EPLUS_PATH and BCVTB_PATH, with the locations where EnergyPlus and BCVTB are installed respectively.

1.3. About Sinergym package

As we have told you in section Manual installation, Python environment can be set up using python_environment.yml with conda. This will install the virtual environment with Python version required and all packages used all-in-one. However, we can make an installation using the Github repository in a python environment directly, like we have shown with virtualenv:

$ source env_sinergym/bin/activate
$ cd sinergym
$ pip install -e .

Extra libraries can be installed by typing pip install -e .[extras]. extras include all optional libraries which have been considered in this project such as testing, visualization, Deep Reinforcement Learning, monitoring , etc. It’s possible to select a subset of these libraries instead of ‘extras’ tag in which we select all optional libraries, for example:

$ cd sinergym
$ pip install -e .[test,doc]

In order to check all our tag list, visit setup.py in Sinergym root repository. In any case, they are not a requirement of the package.

You can also install from oficial pypi repository with last stable version by default:

$ pip install sinergym[extras]

1.4. Check Installation

This project is automatically supervised using tests developed specifically for it. If you want to check Sinergym has been installed successfully, run pytest tests/ -vv in the repository root.

Anyway, every time Sinergym repository is updated, the tests will run automatically in a remote container using the Dockerfile to build it. Github Action will do that job (see Github Actions section).

1.5. Cloud Computing

You can run your experiments in the Cloud too. We are using Google Cloud in order to make it possible. Our team aim to set up an account in which execute our Sinergym container with remote storage and mlflow tracking. For more detail about installation and getting Google Cloud SDK ready to run your experiments, visit our section Preparing Google Cloud.