The goal of the proposed research is to achieve significant improvement in energy efficiency of large buildings by real-time estimation and control of their the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems The key intellectual merit of the proposed research lies in the novel formulation of the HVAC energy optimization problem, which relies on uncertainty reduction through estimation (of thermal loads and occupancies) to make the control design problem tractable. Past and current research in energy optimal control of HVAC systems has assumed that the thermal loads and occupancies are known. This assumption has limited their applicability in practice. The technical research plan utilizes several components from diverse areas ? graphical models, iterative methods, distributed MPC framework ? to produce an integrated framework that shows promising preliminary results. In addition to design of estimation and control algorithms, research is planned on establishing algorithm-independent performance limits, which will increase our understanding of fundamental limits in distributed estimation and control. Finally, extensive experimental validation in real buildings is planned to demonstrate the practical applicability of the methods.
Broader Impact:
Successful completion of the proposed research will lead to a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions in the United States, and improvement in the nation?s energy security. The research will impact the building-energy business sector in the U.S. via the industrial collaboration and technology demonstration that are planned with United Technologies, a key player in building-energy business. The educational component that targets community college students has the potential to directly provide employment-relevant training to America?s workforce, especially those without four-year college degrees. The timeliness of the research topic will help bring about greater engagement of undergraduate students in engineering research. Furthermore, the technical research will impact a broad spectrum of applications that involve estimation and control of spatio-temporal processes with complex dynamics with spatially distributed sensors and actuators. Operation of the electric power grid, monitoring and control of traffic in air, highways, and communication networks are a few examples where this research can be useful.
