Energy - based control in HAVC systems in commercial buildings to optimize the building energy performance

Abstract

The severity of the emerging environmental problems and the criticality of a future energy crisis with associated socio-economic quandaries are becoming strengthen along with the inevitable growth of energy demand due to the ever-increasing population and urbanization. Inspired by this, many state-of-the-art and efficient engineering advancements under demand side management are being conceptualized, developed, and examined via worldwide research for several years. As one of the largest global energy consumers, buildings, and their Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems acquire substantial attention regarding optimal and efficient energy management. Nevertheless, longer computational time, complicated implementation, deficient occupants’ thermal comfort and productivity, and limited practicability and feasibility of most of the approaches that have been proposed, have demotivated the industry applications even though they offer consequential designing and operating advancements to the system. Therefore, the expected building energy performance can be further extended by unraveling these encountered disputes with novel energy saving strategies. This research concentrates on energy optimal operation of HVAC systems by addressing secondary chilled water pumping system, temperature setpoint management, cooling water system, and temperature controllers in Air Handling Unit (AHU). Three different innovative energy saving strategies to determine the optimal number of chilled water pumps to be operated with their optimal speed, optimal zone temperature setpoint schedule, and optimal cooling water flow rate with a setpoint of the chilled water supply temperature have been proposed along with the consideration of system constraints, safety, occupant thermal comfort, and satisfaction. In addition, a novel temperature controller that can be utilized in AHU has been introduced and the performance in comparison with available controllers has been studied. Simulation results obtained via the case studies authenticate the effectiveness of the introduced approaches and encourage the functioning of these strategies in real engineering systems due to the inherent simplicity, robustness, and less computational complexity.