Abstract
With the building sector being responsible for 30% of the total final energy consumption, great interest lies in implementing adequate policies and deploying efficient technologies that would decrease this number. However, building comfort and energy management systems (BCEM) are challenging to manage on account of their increasing complexity with regard to the integration of renewable energy sources or the connection of electrical, thermal and gas grids. Multi-agent~systems (MAS) deal well with such complex issues. This paper presents an MAS for non-residential buildings from the design, implementation and demonstration, both simulation based and in a field test. Starting from an ontology and an attached data model for BCEM application, we elaborated use cases for developing and testing the MAS framework. The building and technical equipment are modeled using the modeling language Modelica under Dymola. The agents are programmed in JADE and communicate with Dymola via TCP/IP and with the real devices via BACnet. Operatively, the~agents can take on different control strategies: normal operation with no optimization, optimization of energy costs, where energy is delivered through the room through the devices that have the lowest operating costs, and relaxation of the comfort constraint, where the costs of the productivity loss under sub-optimal comfort conditions is taken into account during optimization. Comfort is expressed as a function of indoor air temperature. Simulation, including a comparison with a benchmark system, and field test results are presented to demonstrate the features of the proposed BCEM.
Highlights
IntroductionBuildings account for over 30% of the total final energy consumption for all sectors of the economy and for 50% of the global electricity demand [1]
Buildings account for over 30% of the total final energy consumption for all sectors of the economy and for 50% of the global electricity demand [1].the energy savings potential in the buildings sector is substantial
We developed an ontology in Protégé called MASforBECM, meaning ontology for multi-agent systems for building energy and comfort management
Summary
Buildings account for over 30% of the total final energy consumption for all sectors of the economy and for 50% of the global electricity demand [1]. The energy savings potential in the buildings sector is substantial. The wide deployment of best available technologies and efficiency policies could yield annual savings in building final energy use in the range of 53 EJ by 2050. Compared to continuing on the current path both technology and policy wise, this would mean a 29% reduction in projected building energy consumption [2]. Apart from the building materials and installed equipment, a high impact on the operation efficiency of the building falls on the control concept and implementation for its energy system.
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