Abstract
University campuses are normally constituted of large buildings responsible for high energy demand, and are also important as demonstration sites for new technologies and systems. This paper presents the results of achieving energy sustainability in a testbed composed of a set of four buildings that constitute the Telecommunications Engineering School of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. In the paper, after characterizing the consumption of university buildings for a complete year, different options to achieve more sustainable use of energy are presented, considering the integration of renewable generation sources, namely photovoltaic generation, and monitoring and controlling electricity demand. To ensure the implementation of the desired monitoring and control, an internet of things (IoT) platform based on wireless sensor network (WSN) infrastructure was designed and installed. Such a platform supports a smart system to control the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and lighting systems in buildings. Furthermore, the paper presents the developed IoT-based platform, as well as the implemented services. As a result, the paper illustrates how providing old existing buildings with the appropriate technology can contribute to the objective of transforming such buildings into nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) at a low cost.
Highlights
These are the two main pillars that can enable a high reduction in net electricity consumption in order to transform the buildings into nearly zero-energy buildings
The use of photovoltaic (PV) technology was considered because it was the most cost-effective option for this location and building type, other generation options can be used, being the control based on the total generation instead of the PV generation. To ensure such monitoring and control, a low-cost internet of things (IoT)-based platform based on wireless sensor networks (WSN) has been deployed to manage and control electrical systems, with a special focus on heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and lighting
This section describes the architecture design, as well as platform deployment, setup and evaluation over a real infrastructure located at ETSI Telecomunicación (UPM-Madrid) to manage lighting and HVAC systems
Summary
Smart campuses have been attracting increasing attention, mainly because they represent an ideal environment to develop, evaluate and validate smart city and smart building solutions before applying them at larger scales. In ref [11], the design of a PV and energy storage system, integrated with energy efficiency technologies is conducted to achieve a near zero-energy building at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) Such works do not implement ICT platforms to ensure the real-time monitoring and control of the loads. In ref [21], a general framework of the different layers of a smart-campus is presented, including the main technological infrastructures associated with their implementation applied to the University of Malaga in Spain. Ref [24] provides an in-depth review of the different types of internet of energy-based building energy management systems, such as energy routers, storage systems and materials, as well as renewable sources, and ref [25] illustrates how IoT platforms can be used at the school level to promote energy-saving behaviors supported by the data gathered by such platforms.
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