Building Automation Control System Research Articles

Design, Development and Implementation of a Novel Parallel Automated Step Response Testing Tool for Building Automation Systems

The digital transformation has paved the path for new services and efficient management across the value chain of the whole energy sector. For applications behind the meter, buildings stand out as a major contributor to energy consumption and corresponding emissions. Therefore, Building Automation Control Systems (BACS) have been proposed in order to mitigate building performance issues. Finding optimal and automated methods to handle different control points of BACS is very important. In the initial design and commissioning phases, HVAC systems need to be tested exhaustively to guarantee proper function and expected operation compliance. However, the availability of automated step response test tools applied in the building sector is still scarce, forcing engineers around the globe to manually test different scenarios over the same buildings multiple times. This is a tedious and error-prone approach that lacks precision and good resource allocation. Therefore, we propose AUSTRET: a parallel automated multiple processing software for step response testing in buildings. The tool aims to automate the laborious step response tests of BACS cost-effectively. The input parameters can be provided for several control zones and on different control systems. The multi-processing capability allows the step response execution to run in parallel saving time and resources from the operators. The implementation of AUSTRET is first tested in a living lab environment in a university office building and then demonstrated on full-scale in a commercial building setting. The results show how the parallel processing capability of AUSTRET enhances the productivity and efficiency of step response tests in a building and how the different configuration parameters can affect the overall performance of the tests. The preliminary results indicate how automated tools, such as AUSTRET, can improve the automation and effectiveness of step response tests in the design phase or during retro-commissioning building processes.

Impact of occupant autonomy on satisfaction and building energy efficiency

The philosophy of building energy management is going through a paradigm change from traditional, often inefficient, user-controlled systems to one that is centrally automated with the aid of IoT-enabled technologies. In this context, occupants’ perceived control and building automation may seem to be in conflict. The inquiry of this study is rooted in a proposition that while building automation and centralized control systems are assumed to provide indoor comfort and conserve energy use, limiting occupants’ control over their work environment may result in dissatisfaction, and in turn decrease productivity. For assessing this hypothesis, data from the post-occupancy evaluation survey of a smart building in a university in Australia was used to analyze the relationships between perceived control, satisfaction, and perceived productivity. Using structural equation modeling, we have found a positive direct effect of occupants’ perceived control on overall satisfaction with their working area. Meanwhile, perceived control exerts an influence on perceived productivity through satisfaction. Furthermore, a field experiment conducted in the same building revealed the potential impact that occupant controllability can have on energy saving. We changed the default light settings from automatic on-and-off to manual-on and automatic-off, letting occupants choose themselves whether to switch the light on or not. Interestingly, about half of the participants usually kept the lights off, preferring daylight in their rooms. This also resulted in a reduction in lighting electricity use by 17.8% without any upfront investment and major technical modification. These findings emphasize the important role of perceived control on occupant satisfaction and productivity, as well as on the energy-saving potential of the user-in-the-loop automation of buildings.

Application and Design of Intelligent Building Automation Control System

Intelligent building is a safe, comfortable, efficient, energy-saving, convenient and flexible modern building designed and built by organically combining high-tech and architectural art. Building automation control system is an important part of intelligent building, which realizes its own development through the development platform of intelligent building. It can improve the quality of building entities and supporting equipment and the quality of building environment in intelligent building to varying degrees. The building automation system in the intelligent building takes the humanized interface as the emphasis, and takes the combination of mechanical and electrical system, fire control system, access control system and parking management system as the method to create a convenient and comfortable living and working environment for building users. This paper mainly studies the building automation control system of intelligent building, and then describes the content of the building automation control system in intelligent building, and at the same time, carries out in-depth research on related issues, hoping to provide reference for researchers in this field.

The impact of building automation control systems as retrofitting measures on the energy efficiency of a typical Norwegian single-family house

In this study, the energy savings and cost-effectiveness of building automation measures in a retrofitting context are evaluated for a Norwegian single-family house. In addition, two methods for calculating savings from implementing building automation control systems (BACS) are compared: energy performance simulation and the BACS factor method proposed in EN 15232. Four retrofitting packages and four automation levels are combined to create 16 model versions. This study shows that BACS can increase energy savings and improve indoor comfort when implemented as a retrofitting measure. However, the relative impact on energy savings of building automation decreases when the delivered energy is lower. In addition, the impact of building automation on the energy savings is low compared to the effect of retrofitting the building envelope. When only BACS are implemented, savings up to 21% can be achieved, but when an integrated solution is implemented savings up to 60% can be achieved. Finally, some directions for future work are suggested.

Joint Model Predictive Control of Electric and Heating Resources in a Smart Building

The new challenge in power systems design and operation is to organize and control smart micro grids supplying aggregation of users and special loads as electric vehicles charging stations. The presence of renewable and storage can help the optimal operation only if a good control manages all the elements of the grid. New models of green buildings and energy communities are proposed. For a real application they need an appropriate and advanced power system equipped with a building automation control system. This article presents an economic model predictive control approach to the problem of managing the electric and heating resources in a smart building in a coordinated way, for the purpose of achieving in real time nearly zero energy consumption and automated participation to demand response programs. The proposed control, leveraging a mixed integer quadratic programming problem, allows to meet manifold thermal and electric users' requirements and react to inbound demand response signals, while still guaranteeing stable operation of the building's electric and thermal storage equipment. The simulation results, performed for a real case study in Italy, highlight the peculiarities of the proposed approach in the joint handling of electric and thermal building flexibility.

Energy Use in Residential Buildings: Impact of Building Automation Control Systems on Energy Performance and Flexibility

This work shows the results of a research activity aimed at characterizing the energy habits of Italian residential users. In detail, by the energy simulation of a buildings sample, the opportunity to implement a demand/response program (DR) has been investigated. Italian residential utilities are poorly electrified and flexible loads are low. The presence of an automation system is an essential requirement for participating in a DR program and, in addition, it can allow important reductions in energy consumption. In this work the characteristics of three control systems have been defined, based on the services incidence on energy consumptions along with a sensitivity analysis on some energy drivers. Using the procedure established by the European Standard EN 15232, the achievable energy and economic savings have been evaluated. Finally, a financial analysis of the investments has been carried out, considering also the incentives provided by the Italian regulations. The payback time is generally not very long: depending on the control system features it varies from 7 to 10 years; moreover, the automation system installation within dwellings is a relatively simple activity, which is characterized by a limited execution times and by an initial expenditure ranging in 1000 € to 4000 €, related to the three sample systems.

Building automation system to control natural ventilation in school buildings. The case study of “Michelangelo School” in Bari

In school buildings high levels of Indoor Air Quality are required for the specific susceptibility to airborne pollution of occupants, but most of the data published in the scientific literature indicate that classroom ventilation in many schools is still inadequate. The low investment costs and the easy implementation of the Building Automation Systems allow a widely application in the existing buildings. This work studies the natural ventilation mechanisms based mainly on the stack effect of the central atrium and of the stairwells in order to design the building automation control systems.

Use of Automated Control Systems and Advanced Energy Simulations in the Design of Climate Responsive Educational Building for Mediterranean Area

Over the decades, a rapidly changing climate has prompted the world’s most influential leaders and institutions to take action against such an imminent threat. The introduction of Nearly Zero Energy Building (nZEB) concept, though, has barely triggered a major shift, while voluntary labelling systems do not seem to offer any reasonable alternative. Building design ought to be readdressed from the ground up, with climate-responsive constructions servings as a valuable starting point for the purpose. In this paper, conventional bioclimatic design is enhanced and supported by the introduction of Building Automation Control Systems: Typically, the former determines long-term seasonal patterns, whereas the latter only affects the short-term behavior. Their schedules are based on realistic assumptions, while set-points are fine-tuned following energy simulations. Good results have been achieved for a case-study facility in Porto, both in terms of indoor adaptive thermal comfort (the simulated operative temperature complies the adaptive comfort model for more than 98% of the reference year) and energy use (reduced by 53%, compared to a baseline building, devoid of any automation system). Being focused on the decision-making rather than on specific items of design, the authors claim that such an approach may be employed in any climate, regardless of the building type or size, as long as the process is driven by a genuine analysis of the local context (i.e., climate) and by purposefully devised energy simulations.

Aggregation of Users in a Residential/Commercial Building Managed by a Building Energy Management System (BEMS)

Buildings with mixed residential and commercial units show relevant power peak that are further increased by shifting from gas-driven systems to an electric source. The proposed solution is to organize a microgrid for such type of buildings, aggregating different users with a common electric distribution system with a single connection to the grid, a local common generation, and a common heating/cooling system (electric driven). This approach upgrades a group of independent small users with rigid loads and chaotic behavior to a large user with a flexible and controlled profile. A central building automation control system managing all built-in technical systems and smart appliances may control the load, minute by minute, shifting in time shiftable and controllable loads, and merging different kinds of loads, obtaining a flatter diagram. The authors consider the suggested approach convenient to realize a demand side management (DSM) for residential/commercial buildings. distribution system operator (DSM) exploits the flexibility of smart appliances and the thermal inertia of the structure, by imposing local and central set points of heating and cooling systems, according to actual global net load and generation at a given moment. In this paper, main aspects of the proposed control system are presented and simulations for a given case study with a local photovoltaic system generation are provided. Results show that this approach may lead to a power peak reduction up to 20% even in the unfavorable case of combining commercial and residential units. Moreover, full self-consumption of locally generated energy from renewable energy systems may be achieved.

A Cognitive System Architecture for Building Energy Management

Energy systems in buildings, especially heating, ventilation, and air conditioning are often operated inefficiently. The key to efficiency is the building automation control system: this paper examines the optimization of control strategies in building automation using a cognitive system that operates on a knowledge base, which provides the necessary semantic information. This system shall generate, assess, and execute control strategies, and find optimal control solutions. By introducing an intelligent system that identifies specific control strategies for a building and optimizes toward its specific usage, we achieve the advantage of automatically generating automation and control solutions, saving the efforts for manual adaptation. We introduce the knowledge base and the cognitive system, and explain the methodology and algorithms used to implement the required functions. The approach is applied to a building energy management use case that optimizes the operation of a ventilation system.

A set of indices to assess the real performance of daylight-linked control systems

The installation of Building Automation Control Systems (BACs) in general is an effective action to achieve relevant energy savings. Commercial BACs, installed in residential or small offices, often include functions of lighting control, acting as Daylight-Linked Control Systems (DLCSs). Nevertheless, because system performance is strictly dependent on different parameters, BAC’s hardware and software configuration and as well as an inaccurate commissioning do not always allow a perfect execution of the desired tasks; therefore, the system could not work as expected. Moreover, it is well known that energy saving potential is specifically related to the variability of the light environment. Although many methods to assess it are available, these are mainly based on average data, tabular factors, and climate/lighting time series embedded in weather files used in detailed simulations and, in general, they adopt as a benchmark the performance of ideal control systems. In this paper, actual performances of a daylight-linked control system have been evaluated by a set of indices which, in general, can be calculated, after measurement, during the commissioning stage or in periodic monitoring of the system. In particular, these indices take into account the excess and the deficiency of illuminance over time with respect to a target set point that a lighting system should provide and the related energy consumption. The indices have been tested using data measured in a laboratory set up where a commercial daylight-linked control system, working not close to an ideal one, is installed and has been evaluated for different end uses, operating schedules, control strategy (dimming and ON/OFF) and daylight conditions. Finally, useful relations between system performance and environmental conditions have been found.

Demand Side Management in Microgrids for Load Control in Nearly Zero Energy Buildings

The paper presents a feasible model of architecture for the technical building systems (TBS) particularly suitable for nearly zero energy buildings (NZEBs). The suggested model aggregates the users around an electric node in order to reach up the threshold value of electric power, and to get a more virtuous and flexible cumulative load profile. Present proposal is a full electric common smart micro grid with a single point of connection, with heating and domestic hot water generated by a centralized electric heat pump system. The renewable energy is provided by a photovoltaic field connected to the common grid. A building automation control system operates those electric TBS modulating the global load for a building demand response (DR). The effectiveness of the proposed model consists of exploiting thermal inertia as an energy storage, by forcing both local and central set points of heating and air conditioning systems. The control is based on the integrated and common operation of all users and all systems of the building as one unique “large user.” The integrated management of the grid is operated to control the whole electric demand exploiting the self-consumption, avoiding peaks, and maintaining a flat load profile. The suggested microgrid model allows concretely the possibility to realize a building DR with benefits for the end-users in a consumer view point. A study of the effect of these control opportunities on whole electric demand is done by simulation on a case study.

Update of energy performance certificates in the residential sector and scenarios that consider the impact of automation, control and management systems: A case study of La Rioja

Energy performance certificates are considered to be tools for knowledge and energy planning in the residential sector. Although energy performance certificates describe primary energy consumption and the associated emissions of a home or building, they do not consider the influence of building automation control systems (BACS) or technical building management (TBM) systems on these parameters. The European Standard EN 15232 remedies this shortcoming and evaluates the savings in primary energy and the reduction of CO2 emissions that can be achieved by these systems. This study investigates the energy performance certificates registered in the Autonomous Community of La Rioja and considers the policy changes in the Technical Building Code (Código Técnico de la Edificación) and, specifically, the Basic Document for Energy Saving (Documento Básico de Ahorro de Energía) (CTE-DB-HE). Due to this regulatory change, we corrected the certificates and outlined different scenarios based on the implementation of these systems in this study. These scenarios show the potential distribution of energy performance certificates and the improvements in the ratings obtained.

A Fuzzy-Based Building Automation Control System: Optimizing the Level of Energy Performance and Comfort in an Office Space by Taking Advantage of Building Automation Systems and Solar Energy

Building automation systems (BASs) are the key to improving the energy performance of buildings as well as the occupants? comfort. There is a need to build a knowledge base on the matter and to grow suitable algorithms for a smart management of intelligent buildings. Therefore, fuzzy logic is a valuable candidate for developing robust algorithms. The scope of this article is to validate a fuzzy-logic approach with the ability to optimize the level of energy performance and comfort in an office space by taking advantage of BASs and solar energy. In BASs, dynamic elements, e.g., dynamic facade and luminaires, can exploit daylight and solar gain based on the condition that well-programmed integrated multicriteria decision-making methods are used. In this article, a virtual model of a smart office room (SOR) equipped with dynamic shading, lighting, and an air-conditioning control system was studied, and four different scenarios were considered: control versus no control, economy versus comfort mode, fluorescent versus lightemitting diode (LED), and dimming versus switching. Both economy and comfort mode showed a better energy performance than the noncontrolled scenarios. In conclusion, the proposed model is a valuable tool for optimizing comfort features and energy demand.

Building Automation Control System driven by Gestures

This paper presents our system for controlling residential and commercial buildings using natural user interfaces. Such a system consists of a set of depth cameras installed in buildings rooms and a central processing computer which analyses that depth data. Due to advanced logic it is capable of identifying people occupying defined areas and recognizing their gestures. The system cooperates with a Domatiq System - Intelligent Building Management System, to provide an overall control of the building. Together with the Domatiq, users can associate specific gestures with Domatiq actions and events to realize specialized scenarios. This allows the user to control particular building components in a more natural way. Embedded feedback mechanism enhances the overall performance by informing users about current state of their commands and actions.

Design of Computer Application Building Automation Control System

The object of this research is building automation control system and to design the system by means of the computer application. First, I analyze the operating principle of the automatic monitored control system based on the computer technology, and I find that with the help of Ethernet switching engineering we can solve the problem about high network load and transmission delay of traditional building automation control system. At the same time, I design the overall structure of the automatic monitored control system. Then I learn the hardware control system and the implementation of the software, and the mainly representative object is the central air-conditioning control system. As the core component of the control system, PLC’s hardware and transducer are chosen. And I design the process of software control, data acquisition, communication device and other modules. Meanwhile, I finish the design of the procedure of PLC master control module and realize the software monitoring and control with the host computer software. Finally, I explore the remote monitoring software based on internet, and improve some problem like the spread of information during the monitoring in the past and develop the auxiliary function of short message reminder with the end of the integrated structure, idea and the structure based on the computer application and the design of the key part.

A Zero Energy Concept Building for the Mediterranean Climate

The Mediterranean climate distinguishes for a mild heating season and a hot (and usually dry) cooling season. All along the year solar radiation is plentiful and the daily range of temperature during the summer is large, due to dry and clear conditions. This environment allowed to design and build a zero energy concept building (a detached single family house) on the basis of passive heating and cooling technologies, supported, when required, by short time active conditioning. The design process was optimized by extensive energy simulations, resulting in an optimal energy balance and favorable thermal comfort conditions along the year. The building is instrumented with an accurate building automation control system, and a number of sensors for a detailed energy and environmental monitoring. The monitoring equipment and framework, have been devised to support further detailed studies to improve the design concept and to provide accurate and comprehensive data to the scientific community.

Impact of building automation control systems and technical building management systems on the energy performance class of residential buildings: An Italian case study

The paper focuses on the evaluation of the impact on residential buildings of building automation control (BAC) and technical building management (TBM) systems. This work shows how the control, monitoring and automation functions considered by the European Standard EN 15232 can considerably influence the energy performance of a single-family test house and, consequently, its energy performance class. The study puts into evidence that the benefit that can be drawn from the installation of BAC and TBM systems depends on the type of technical appliances in the household and on the starting energy performance class.Finally, the economic impact due to the introduction of BACS or TBM function is evaluated for different starting energy classes of the household under consideration.