Impact of a Weather Predictive Control Strategy for Inert Building Technology on Thermal Comfort and Energy Demand

Abstract

The sun’s total radiation alone exceeds the world population’s entire energy consumption by 7.500 times and ignites secondary renewable energy sources. The end energy consumption buildings use for heating amounts to 28% of Germany’s total energy consumption. With the ongoing trend of digitalization and the transition of the German energy supply away from fossil fuels and the consequent political dependency, electric heat pumps and photovoltaic (PV) systems have become increasingly important to the discussion. This has led to an increasing demand for smart control strategies, especially for inert systems such as thermally activated building systems (TABS). This paper presents and analyses a weather predictive control (WPC) strategy using a validated thermodynamic simulation model. The literature review of this paper outlines that the current common control strategies are data intense and complex in their implementation into the built environment. The simple approach of the WPC uses future ambient temperature and solar radiation to optimize the control of the heating, cooling, ventilation, and sun protection system. The thermal comfort and energy demand evaluate the concept. We show that with a WPC for TABS, thermal comfort can improve without increasing the energy demand for the office building in the moderate climate of Munich. Furthermore, this paper concludes that the WPC works more effectively with more thermal mass. This simplified building control strategy promotes the European roadmap goal of climate neutrality in 2050, as it bridges the phenomenon of the performance gap.

Why Do Consumers Buy Green Smart Buildings without Engaging in Energy-Saving Behaviors in the Workplace? The Perspective of Materialistic Value

“…Based on these studies, it is crucial to explore consumers' purchase intention for green smart buildings and their antecedents because green smart buildings can not only save the world's available energy but also mitigate the greenhouse effect. Previous investigations into these antecedents have been insufficient, as almost all of them focused on advanced technologies for green smart buildings [13][14][15] rather than facilitating consumer purchases. Regardless of how advanced the technology is, it will not work if consumers are unwilling to buy green smart buildings.…”

International Comparison of Weather and Emission Predictive Building Control

“…The first paper validated the thermodynamic model using an in situ measurement room [14]. Both the second and third papers outlined a concept focusing on the impact of a CO 2 -optimized and weather predictive control [3,15]. This paper combines the two building control approaches into one simulation model using a validated thermodynamic simulation model.…”

“…This study deals with a simple weather predictive control (WPC) approach, using thermally activated building systems (TABSs) to create energy savings while providing thermal comfort [15]. The research gap of this paper is based on the phenomena of the performance gap [16], as well as on the energy-saving potentials of the concepts of thermal mass [17,18] and insulating additively manufactured façade elements [19], the availability of weather data [8,15], and the dynamic nature of thermal comfort perception [20][21][22][23]. It is apparent that various smart building control approaches are data-intensive and complex, which limits their implementation.…”

“…The control parameters of sun shading, ventilation, heating, and cooling systems are adapted compared to a standard control strategy. The detailed equations of the concepts about weather predictive control are outlined in a previous paper [15]. The second part of the predictive mode addresses the energy supply when filling the storage.…”

Advancing Fault Detection in Building Automation Systems through Deep Learning

“…Not only have these structures expanded in scale, but the systems that manage them have become very complex [3,4]. This is driving the demand for sophisticated building automation and control systems [5][6][7]. BACnet is an essential component among the various protocols that drive this.…”