Management of air-conditioning systems in residential buildings by using fuzzy logic

Abstract

There has been a rising concern in reducing the energy consumption in buildings. Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system is the biggest consumer of energy in buildings. In this study, management of the air-conditioning system of a building for efficient energy operation and comfortable environment is investigated. The strategy used in this work depends on classifying the rooms to three different groups: very important rooms, important rooms and normal rooms. The total mass flow rate is divided between all rooms by certain percentage using a fuzzy-logic system to get the optimum performance for each room. The suggested Building Management System (BMS) was found capable of keeping errors in both temperature and humidity within the acceptable limits at different operating conditions. The BMS can save the chilled/hot water flow rate and the cooling/heating capacity of rooms.