Control of HVAC system comfort by sampling

The sampling of the users comfort, allows observing and predicting the level of comfort on the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems. The development of online sampling systems assists in the recognition of the behavior patterns that occur in the offices. This paper presents a user-friendly tool designed and developed in order to make easier knowledge extraction and representation to make possible decisions about which demand that must prevail, the user comfort or saving into a central system. This decision may depend on the occupation and feeling of comfort of its occupants. Some studies have put neutral thermal conditions outside the ranges of comfort of the ASHRAE standard. The actual rules of the HVAC systems are based on studies carried out on specific populations in a specific space, which are not valid in certain situations. This is a dynamic idea of the comfort based in real data. The methodology used provides important and useful information to be able to select the comfort set-point of the rooms of a central heating system without the need to use fixed values based on programmed time schedules or any other methodology. The response to comfort in an area of a building throughout the day can be seen in this study. The users were assessed using a standard set of key questions in order to measure the level of satisfaction with environmental factors, thanks to a questionnaire of imprecise answers. We seek an improvement in the building users, regardless of their particularities

Metodología para el análisis y toma de decisiones mediante muestreo en los edificios

The sampling of the users comfort, allows observing and predicting the level of comfort on the HVAC system. The development of online sampling systems assists in the recognition of the behaviour patterns that occur in the offices. This paper presents a methodology specially designed and developed in order to make easier knowledge extraction and representation, in this way it possible to make decisions about the comfort in buildings. The methodology used provides important and useful information to select the comfort set-point of the rooms of a central HVAC system without the need to use fixed values based on programmed time schedules or any other methodology. In this methodology, the users are evaluated by using a standard set of key questions in order to measure the level of satisfaction respect to environmental factors, thanks to a questionnaire of imprecise answers. We seek an improvement in the building users, regardless of their particularities.El muestreo del confort de los usuarios, permite observar y predecir el nivel de confort en el sistema de aire acondicionado. El desarrollo de los sistemas de muestreo online ayuda en el reconocimiento de patrones de comportamiento que se producen en las oficinas. En este trabajo se presenta una metodología especialmente diseñada y desarrollada con el fin de facilitar la extracción y representación del conocimiento, de esta manera es posible tomar decisiones sobre el confort en los edificios. La metodología utilizada proporciona información importante y útil para seleccionar el punto de ajuste del confort de las habitaciones para un sistema de climatización central, sin la necesidad de utilizar valores fijos, basados en horarios programados o cualquier otra metodología. En esta metodología, los usuarios son evaluados mediante el uso de un conjunto estándar de preguntas clave para medir el nivel de satisfacción respecto a los factores ambientales, gracias a un cuestionario de respuestas imprecisas. Buscamos una mejora en los usuarios de los edificios, independientemente de sus particularidades

Intelligent control of agricultural irrigation system based on wireless sensor and actuator networks

Optimizing water usage is the primary objective of intelligent and eco-friendly agricultural irrigation systems. In irrigation systems, the flow and pressure of water is usually regulated by controlling the position of the valve. The proportioning electronic actuator accepts a signal from the control system and moves the valve to allow the valve to partially open or close. Varying speed of pump motor can also control the usage of water. The integration of wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs) into irrigation management promises to overcome the excessive watering problem while providing additional functionality. This paper presents a case study on the use of WSAN for irrigation activities and investigates the application of fuzzy logic based valve aperture control. The results show that the proposed strategy can be effective in water flow control

Increase Microgrid's Consumer Comfort by Using Fuzzy and Optimization Algorithms

Whereas the most important fundamental factor for today’s human is energy and wasting energy leads to increasing costs and destruction of natural resources, it is attempted through using modern and electronic methods to optimize the energy consumption and preventing of wasting energy. According to technological advancements and level of knowledge of people and having different electronic means, it is applied from several methods including: wireless sensor networks at home automation, energy management system, BEMS system and intelligent electrical keys on building to respond the requirements of users that leads to comfort of users, reducing costs, optimization of energy consumption and prevention of wasting energy. In this article, it is benefit from intelligent control methods by using optimization algorithms (PSO & GA) and fuzzy logic for controlling energy of building in order to obtain the maximum welfare and comfort of inhabitants in a building using from new pneumatic and solar recyclable resources. In order to show this performance, it is benefit from simulation at MATLAB environment

An Adaptive Intelligent Integrated Lighting Control Approach for High-Performance Office Buildings

abstract: An acute and crucial societal problem is the energy consumed in existing commercial buildings. There are 1.5 million commercial buildings in the U.S. with only about 3% being built each year. Hence, existing buildings need to be properly operated and maintained for several decades. Application of integrated centralized control systems in buildings could lead to more than 50% energy savings. This research work demonstrates an innovative adaptive integrated lighting control approach which could achieve significant energy savings and increase indoor comfort in high performance office buildings. In the first phase of the study, a predictive algorithm was developed and validated through experiments in an actual test room. The objective was to regulate daylight on a specified work plane by controlling the blind slat angles. Furthermore, a sensor-based integrated adaptive lighting controller was designed in Simulink which included an innovative sensor optimization approach based on genetic algorithm to minimize the number of sensors and efficiently place them in the office. The controller was designed based on simple integral controllers. The objective of developed control algorithm was to improve the illuminance situation in the office through controlling the daylight and electrical lighting. To evaluate the performance of the system, the controller was applied on experimental office model in Lee et al.’s research study in 1998. The result of the developed control approach indicate a significantly improvement in lighting situation and 1-23% and 50-78% monthly electrical energy savings in the office model, compared to two static strategies when the blinds were left open and closed during the whole year respectively.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Architecture 201

Occupancy driven supervisory control of indoor environment systems to minimise energy consumption of airport terminal building

A very economical way of reducing the operational energy consumed by large commercial buildings such as an airport terminal is the automatic control of its active energy systems. Such control can adjust the indoor environment systems setpoints to satisfy comfort during occupancy or when unoccupied, initiate energy conservation setpoints and if necessary, shut down part of the building systems. Adjusting energy control setpoints manually in large commercial buildings can be a nightmare for facility managers. Incidentally for such buildings, occupancy based control strategies are not achieved through the use of conventional controllers alone. This research, therefore, investigated the potential of using a high-level control system in airport terminal building. The study presents the evolution of a novel fuzzy rule-based supervisory controller, which intelligently establishes comfort setpoints based on flow of passenger through the airport as well as variable external environmental conditions. The inputs to the supervisory controller include: the time schedule of the arriving and departing passenger planes; the expected number of passengers; zone daylight illuminance levels; and external temperature. The outputs from the supervisory controller are the low-level controllers internal setpoint profile for thermal comfort, visual comfort and indoor air quality. Specifically, this thesis makes contribution to knowledge in the following ways: It utilised artificial intelligence to develop a novel fuzzy rule-based, energy-saving supervisory controller that is able to establish acceptable indoor environmental quality for airport terminals based on occupancy schedules and ambient conditions. It presents a unique methodology of designing a supervisory controller using expert knowledge of an airport s indoor environment systems through MATLAB/Simulink platform with the controller s performance evaluated in both MATLAB and EnergyPlus simulation engine. Using energy conservation strategies (setbacks and switch-offs), the pro-posed supervisory control system was shown to be capable of reducing the energy consumed in the Manchester Airport terminal building by up to 40-50% in winter and by 21-27% in summer. It demonstrates that if a 45 minutes passenger processing time is aimed for instead of the 60 minutes standard time suggested by ICAO, energy consumption is significantly reduced (with less carbon emission) in winter particularly. The potential of the fuzzy rule-based supervisory controller to optimise comfort with minimal energy based on variation in occupancy and external conditions was demonstrated through this research. The systematic approach adopted, including the use of artificial intelligence to design supervisory controllers, can be extended to other large buildings which have variable but predictable occupancy patterns

Mobile Application to Support Intelligent Supervision System for Service Buildings

The work developed and described in this dissertation is part of the Ambiosensing project, developed under the Portugal 2020 program. This project aims to design and develop a tool for the energy management of buildings, considering low implementation costs, adaptability, versatility, and easy maintenance in line with the premises of Industry 4.0. One of the main requirements of the project is related to the intelligent supervision of equipment, adaptability and optimization of energy efficiency and quality of comfort ofthe occupants of buildings.In this way, the problem that this dissertation addresses is related to the comfort of the occupants within a service building. For that purpose,an application for mobile devices was designed and developed complementing the Intelligent Supervision system developed in the project. This application makes it possibleto view the values of the registered environmental variables and allows the users of the spaces to leave their feedback regarding their feeling considering the presented values, in order to improve the performance of the supervision system. In addition toallowing the connection between the user and the system improving not only the system's performance, but the application also improves the user's experience inside the building.O trabalho desenvolvido e descrito nesta dissertação está integrado no projeto Ambiosensing, desenvolvido no âmbito do programa Portugal 2020. Este projeto tem como objectivo a concepção e desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta para a gestão energética de edifícios, considerando baixos custos de implementação, adaptabilidade, versatilidade e fácil manutenção alinhado com as premissas da Indústria 4.0. Um dos principais requisitos do projecto está relacionado com a supervisão inteligente dos equipamentos, adaptabilidade e optimização de eficiência energética e qualidade de conforto dos ocupantes dos edifícios. Desta forma, o problema que esta dissertação aborda está relacionado com o conforto dos ocupantes dentro de um edifício de serviços e para tal foi desenhada e desenvolvida uma aplicação para dispositivos moveis que serve de complemento ao sistema de Supervisão Inteligente desenvolvido no projecto. Esta aplicação possibilita a visualização dos valores das variáveis ambientais registados permite que os utilizadores dos espaços deixem o seu feedback em relação à sua sensibilidade sobre os valores apresentados, com o intuito de melhorar a performance do sistema de supervisão.Além de permitir a ligação entre o utilizador e o sistema melhorando,não só a performance do mesmo, a aplicação permite também melhorar a experiência do utilizador no interior do edifício