Architectures and Algorithms for Building Automation—An Industry View

Data-driven methods for building control — A review and promising future directions

“…Technicians that manage PLCs as well as the supervisory system aim at ensuring a smooth and continuous operation of the overall plant, and hence it is critical for them to trust and feel comfortable with the control system as a whole [Henze, 2013]. According to the industrial survey [Stluka et al, 2018] "The operations staff are not motivated to try new controls and optimization software, because operational reliability is their number one goal". Therefore, keeping already functional blocks in their place is certainly desirable in practice, and more complex control strategies should be able to interface with these components rather than replacing them.…”

“…Large heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) facilities need to be constantly supervised by technicians, which are hired by companies to 'adjust settings', 'ensure optimal performance' and sometimes even operate some subsystems manually [Stluka et al, 2018, Royapoor et al, 2018. It is reasonable to assume that a well designed automatic controller would perform better than a human in such tasks, especially when highly complex objectives are considered such as time-varying electricity prices for instance.…”

“…However, despite efforts from researchers to demonstrate the effectiveness of several rigorous control methodologies for the different HVAC hierarchy levels (e.g. [Arguello-Serrano and Velez-Reyes, 1999, Huaguang and Cai, 2002, Shin et al, 2002, Anderson et al, 2008, Gondhalekar et al, 2013, Wang and Hu, 2018), industrial solutions still rely on PID regulators for low-level devices, and rule-based schemes combined with finite-state machines for the high-level supervisory system [Salsbury, 2005, Wang and Ma, 2008, Stluka et al, 2018.…”

Design of an EnergyPlus Model-Based Smart Controller for Maintaining Thermal Comfortable Environment in Non-Domestic Building

“…The energy consumption of HVAC systems can be reduced in various ways, such as increasing airtightness, increasing appliance efficiency, better insulation, inactive ventilation schemes, advanced control, and so on. To adjust HVAC control parameters and ensure optimal performance, HVAC systems should be constantly supervised by technicians [4]. A well-designed automatic control would perform better than manual control for such tasks, especially when highly complex objectives are considered.…”

An Approach to Data-Driven Sensing and Predictive Supervisory Control for Commercial Buildings with In-Situ Evaluation

“…One approach to reducing heating and cooling energy use, model-based predictive control (MPC), has demonstrated the potential provide significant energy savings through software modifications to building automation system (BAS) controls , Hilliard, Swan et al 2016. Despite the potential and effort provided by the academic community to advance the use of predictive control in buildings (Anderson, Buehner et al 2008, Oldewurtel, Parisio et al 2012, Touretzky and Baldea 2014, Žáčeková, Váňa et al 2014, Wang and Ong 2017, Serale, Fiorentini et al 2018, commercial building controls remain largely based on proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control without any predictive capabilities (Salsbury 2005, Wang and Ma 2008, Killian and Kozek 2016, Stluka, Parthasarathy et al 2018. Commercially implemented predictive control is uncommon at the building level, and virtually non-existent at the zone and room levels (Royapoor, Antony et al 2018).…”