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Energy consumption for hot water production is a major draw in high efficiency buildings. Optimizing this has typically been approached from a thermodynamics perspective, decoupled from occupant influence. Furthermore, optimization usually…
We present a careful comparison of two model-free control algorithms, Evolution Strategies (ES) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), with receding horizon model predictive control (MPC) for operating simulated, price responsive water…
Indoor swimming pools (ISPs) consume significant amounts of electrical and thermal energy to ensure the heating of water and air, ventilation, and maintaining adequate humidity levels. This is measured in GWh per year for large…
Electric heat-pump water heaters (HPWHs) could reduce the energy costs, emissions, and power grid impacts associated with water heating, the second-largest energy use in United States housing. However, most HPWHs today require 240 V…
Model predictive control of residential air conditioning could reduce energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining or improving occupants' thermal comfort. However, most approaches to predictive air conditioning control…
Due to embedded systems` stringent design constraints, much prior work focused on optimizing energy consumption and/or performance. Since embedded systems typically have fewer cooling options, rising temperature, and thus temperature…
Model predictive control (MPC) strategies allow residential water heaters to shift load in response to dynamic price signals. Crucially, the performance of such strategies is sensitive to various algorithm design choices. In this work, we…
The optimal management of a building's microclimate to satisfy the occupants' needs and objectives in terms of comfort, energy efficiency, and costs is particularly challenging. This complexity arises from the non-linear, time-dependent…
Urban wastewater sector is being pushed to optimize processes in order to reduce energy consumption without compromising its quality standards. Energy costs can represent a significant share of the global operational costs (between 50% and…
Driven by the opportunity to harvest the flexibility related to building climate control for demand response applications, this work presents a data-driven control approach building upon recent advancements in reinforcement learning. More…
This paper proposes a learning-based model predictive control (MPC) approach for the thermal control of a four-zone smart building. The objectives are to minimize energy consumption and maintain the residents' comfort. The proposed control…
Buildings account for approximately 40% of global energy consumption, and with the growing share of intermittent renewable energy sources, enabling demand-side flexibility, particularly in heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems,…
An optimized heat pump control for building heating was developed for minimizing CO2 emissions from related electrical power generation. The control is using weather and CO2 emission forecasts as input to a Model Predictive Control (MPC) -…
In this work, we develop an optimal water heater control method for a smart home environment. It is important to notice that unlike battery storage systems, energy flow in a water heater control system is not reversible. In order to…
Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) is extremely energy-consuming, accounting for 40% of total building energy consumption. Therefore, it is crucial to design some energy-efficient building thermal control policies which can…
At high latitudes, many cities adopt a centralized heating system to improve the energy generation efficiency and to reduce pollution. In multi-tier systems, so-called district heating, there are a few efficient approaches for the flow rate…
Within the environmental context, numerical modeling is a promising approach to assessing the energy efficiency of buildings. Resilient buildings need to be designed, and capable of adapting to future extreme heat. Simulations are required…
We study the problem of tuning the parameters of a room temperature controller to minimize its energy consumption, subject to the constraint that the daily cumulative thermal discomfort of the occupants is below a given threshold. We…
Classical methods to control heating systems are often marred by suboptimal performance, inability to adapt to dynamic conditions and unreasonable assumptions e.g. existence of building models. This paper presents a novel deep reinforcement…
As seasonal thermal energy storage emerges as an efficient solution to reduce CO2 emissions of buildings, challenges appear related to its optimal operation. In a system including short-term electricity storage, long-term heat storage, and…