Influence of occupants’ behaviour on energy and carbon emission reduction in a higher education building in the UK

This article focuses on one of the case studies in the Carbon Brainprint research project funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Chatterton, J., D. Parsons, J. Nicholls, P. Longhurst, M. Bernon, A. Palmer, F. Brennan, et al. 2015. “Carbon Brainprint – An Estimate of the Intellectual Contribution of Research Institutions to Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Process Safety and Environmental Protection 96: 74–81). The UK total CO2e emissions in 2010 amounted to 582MtCO2e. It is estimated that non-domestic buildings and domestic buildings were responsible for 18% (106MtCO2e) and 28% (165MtCO2e) of these emissions, respectively. A case study method was used to investigative the opportunity of using occupants’ awareness and behavioural interventions to reduce energy use and carbon emissions in a non-domestic building of a higher education institution. An action research approach, informed by the theory of planned behaviour, was argued for this case study. It has demonstrated 20% savings in lighting, office equipment and catering energy use, largely through user awareness and behaviour change. If this level of saving were to be reflected throughout the non-domestic building stock it would represent an annual reduction in the order of 7MtCO2e in the UK. These figures relate specifically to non-domestic buildings. However, some of the techniques involved are directly transferable to domestic buildings, with the potential for further emission reductions

A Control Methodology for Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) in Heat Networks with Distributed Generation

Reducing building energy consumption is important to achieve sustainable development, as a result, there is a need to investigate better energy systems with well-designed management infrastructure. At the Creative Energy Homes, a low-temperature heat network with distributed generation links seven properties. The aim of the system is to investigate the efficiency benefits of low-temperature heating, while at the same time testing the prosumer concept. For homeowners to be prosumers, they can buy and sell heat to a network. This system is the first of its kind, and as a result required bespoke Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS). This paper focuses on the hardware, software, and system operation used as part of project SCENIC (Smart Controlled Energy Networks Integrated in Communities). The project utilises a simple and cheap hardware configuration involving relays, IO boards and RaspberryPi microcomputers. An open-source Building energy Management System (oBeMS) platform is used for monitoring and control

Multi-agent collaboration for decision support in shared zones of intelligent buildings

In domain of intelligent buildings, saving energy in buildings and increasing preferences of occupants are two important factors. These factors are the important keys for evaluating the performance of work environment. In recent years, many researchers combine these areas to create the system that can change from original to the modern work environment called intelligent work environment. Due to advance of agent technology, it has received increasing attention in the area of intelligent pervasive environments. In this paper, we review several issues in intelligent buildings, with respect to the implementation of control system for intelligent buildings via multi-agent systems. Furthermore, we present the MASBO (Multi-Agent System for Building cOntrol) that has been implemented for controlling the building facilities to reach the balancing between energy efficiency and occupant’s comfort. In addition to enhance the MASBO system, the collaboration through negotiation among agents is presented