Abstract
The paper proposes the integration of structural monitoring with Building Management Systems for electricity and gas distributions. To assess the state of damage of existing buildings the technics of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is adopted. SHM as well as to record the occurrence of sudden structural damage resulting from exceptional events (earthquakes, explosions, shocks and collisions with vehicles, etc.), allows the monitoring of the progressive damage and structural performance under operating conditions through the extraction of the modal parameters of the structure. This approach requires time to process acquired data that, depending on the size of the building and the number of monitored points, varies from minutes to hours. In this paper, an intelligent system is proposed to immediately communicate during an earthquake the overrun of a certain ground shaking threshold so that gas delivery and selected power loads are interrupted, as suggested by current national regulations on structures. The use of low-cost and reduced size accelerometric sensors integrated with Energy Monitoring Systems is proposed in both highrisk earthquake centers and in all “strategic” buildings that must ensure their operation use immediately after the earthquake. The procedure for calibrating the horizontal and vertical acceleration threshold is also sketched.
Highlights
In the last two decades, a revolution occurred in the energy sector
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) as well as to record the occurrence of sudden structural damage resulting from exceptional events, allows the monitoring of the progressive damage and structural performance under operating conditions through the extraction of the modal parameters of the structure
Distributed generation, demand response programs, storage availability and advanced smart metering show the potential to create new business models built around active customers who have reached higher level of awareness and have been enabled to participate directly in the management of energy grids [1,2]
Summary
In the last two decades, a revolution occurred in the energy sector. Energy systems moved from “operationcentric” grids to “customer-centric” ones, where the final users aim to become independent of the main distribution grid and act as a “prosumer” i.e. a producer and consumer of electricity, heat/cool, and more recently of natural gas or biogas, too. It is interesting to note that in OPCM 3274/2003, this obligation was imposed only for life-lines with a gas flow of 50 Nm3/h or more (corresponding to a power of approximately 400 to 500 kW), while during the Legislative updates, and in particular the current NTC 08 [4,5] this limit has been eliminated, leading to intrinsically increasing the safety even for all buildings that do not have large installations This is of great importance because, while up to a few years ago large buildings required great thermal power, at present, and in light of the international commitments undertaken by Italy, in the years to come we will find buildings with elevate volumes, with high levels of crowding, but with smaller and smaller generators because they are getting less energetic. The rationale behind the proposed architecture is to use electro-valves available on gas smart meters and electrical switches to interrupt the supply in order to avoid secondary effects due to earthquakes
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