This I-Corps team has developed tools to forecast energy demands for buildings in cities and for cities as a whole. The application of forecasting energy demands has high commercial value for a range of users including building operators, utility companies, data center managers, and many others to prepare their facilities and/or take advantage of energy savings. The proposed technology can have a large impact on industries and government entities that provide information, management controls, equipment, and energy resources for the built environment by accurate forecasting of their energy demands. Heavily urbanized regions offer some of the greatest opportunities for this technology to have a significant impact across this broad range of applications areas. New control and HVAC technologies may be envisioned that make use of forecasted energy information to optimize their operation.
The proposed concept is based on the existing Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) mesoscale model that considers real time temporal fluctuations of local weather and specific characteristics of buildings, neighborhoods, and cities, including building heights, materials, optical properties,HVAC and energy generation systems used, and usage by occupants. Significant energy savings could be possible due to a range of possible scenarios including but not limited to safety in the grid, anticipated preparation of large HVAC equipment based on refine forecasted weather and/or demand, better planning of production stocks, or long-term energy efficiency planning based on improved understanding of the energy activity of facilities.
