Integrating smart energy management solutions into building automation systems

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Commercial building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in Canada account for 7% of Canada's total energy use and are responsible for 6% of Canada's total GHG emissions. Growing evidence in the literature indicates that about 30% of the energy used by commercial building HVAC systems is wasted due to suboptimal configuration and poor maintenance of controls hardware and software. In partnership with the largest Canadian building management system (BMS) hardware and software manufacturer, Delta Controls, this project aims to eliminate much of this waste through smart and grid-interactive energy management capabilities integrated into BMSs serving commercial buildings. Specifically, the project will improve fault detection and diagnostics and virtual metering algorithms previously developed by the applicant's group, develop new model-based predictive controls and demand response algorithms, and unify them as a complete workflow. The algorithms will be developed by using the building performance simulation (BPS) tool EnergyPlus and its Python energy management system environment as a sandbox. Later, they will be tested in a living-lab facility at Carleton University for measurement and verification.Outcomes of the project include a suite of algorithms augmenting traditional BMS software capabilities with smart and grid-interactive energy management capabilities. Development and demonstration of the algorithms will be disseminated via journal and conference papers. Two graduate students will be trained with advanced skills in controls and automation of HVAC systems, BPS, and data analytics. The algorithms are expected to reduce heating and cooling energy use in commercial buildings by 30%. While these benefits will be immediately available to 8,200 buildings currently using the partner's BMS software, the benefits will scale to many of Canada's half a million commercial and institutional buildings.