Practice and analysis of recycling non-drinking water from air-condition and reverse-osmosis system into rainwater collection system

This paper is based on the rainwater collection project in the retrofit of the Dongyi teaching block in Zhejiang University Xixi Campus.The analysis incorporates the local meteorological data, recycling water utilization, and precipitation adjustment.The rainwater collection system in this program also adds the condensation water from the heating, ventilation and air conditioning （ HVAC） system and the concentration from the reverse-osmosis system used for watering greens and supplying waterscapes.By calculating, the quantity of the HVAC condensation water in summer is 3.48 m3/d, and the quantity of the reverse-osmosis concentrated water is 198 to 396 L/d.This method solves the water shortage caused by high evaporation in summer and low precipitation in winter.Supported by empirical monitoring data, the proposed method significantly increases the economic efficiency of the system during the summer period.

Country-level meteorological parameters for building energy efficiency in China

Accurate basic data are necessary to support performance-based design for achieving carbon peak and carbon neutral targets in the building sector.Meteorological parameters are the prerequisites of building thermal engineering design,heating ventilation and air conditioning design,and energy consumption simulations.Focusing on the key issues such as low spatial coverage and the lack of daily or higher time resolution data,daily and hourly models of the surface meteorological data and solar radiation were established and evaluated.Surface meteorological data and solar radiation data were generated for 1019 cities and towns in China from 1988 to 2017.The data were carefully compared,and the accuracy was proved to be high.All the meteorological parameters can be assessed in the building sector via a sharing platform.Then,country-level meteorological parameters were developed for energy-efficient building assessment in China,based on actual meteorological data in the present study.This set of meteorological parameters may facilitate engineering applications as well as allowing the updating and expansion of relevant building energy efficiency standards.The study was supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project of China during the 13th Five-Year Plan Period,named Fundamental parameters on building energy efficiency in China,comprising of 15 top-ranking universities and institutions in China.

HVAC energy cost minimization in smart grids: A cloud-based demand side management approach with game theory optimization and deep learning

In this paper, we present a novel cloud-based demand side management (DSM) optimization approach for the cost reduction of energy usage in heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in residential homes at the district level. The proposed approach achieves optimization through scheduling of HVAC energy usage within permissible bounds set by house users. House smart home energy management (SHEM) devices are connected to the utility/aggregator via a dedicated communication network that is used to enable DSM. Each house SHEM can predict its own HVAC energy usage for the next 24 h using minimalistic deep learning (DL) prediction models. These predictions are communicated to the aggregator, which will then do day ahead optimizations using the proposed game theory (GT) algorithm. The GT model captures the interaction between aggregator and customers and identifies a solution to the GT problem that translates into HVAC energy peak shifting and peak reduction achieved by rescheduling HVAC energy usage. The found solution is communicated by the aggregator to houses SHEM devices in the form of offers via DSM signals. If customers’ SHEM devices accept the offer, then energy cost reduction will be achieved. To validate the proposed algorithm, we conduct extensive simulations with a custom simulation tool based on GridLab-D tool, which is integrated with DL prediction models and optimization libraries. Results show that HVAC energy cost can be reduced by up to 36% while indirectly also reducing the peak-to-average (PAR) and the aggregated net load by up to 9.97%.

Clustering compression-based computation-efficient calibration method for digital twin modeling of HVAC system

Digital twin is regarded as the next-generation technology for the effective operation of heating,ventilation and air conditioning(HVAC)systems.It is essential to calibrate the digital twin models to match them closely with real physical systems.Conventional real-time calibration methods cannot satisfy such requirements since the computation loads are beyond acceptable tolerances.To address this challenge,this study proposes a clustering compression-based method to enhance the computation efficiency of digital twin model calibration for HVAC systems.This method utilizes clustering algorithms to remove redundant data for achieving data compression.Moreover,a hierarchical multi-stage heuristic model calibration strategy is developed to accelerate the calibration of similar component models.Its basic idea is that once a component model is calibrated by heuristic methods,its optimal solution is utilized to narrow the ranges of parameter probability distributions of similar components.By doing so,the calibration process can be guided,so that fewer iterations would be used.The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using the operational data from an HVAC system in an industrial building.Results show that the proposed clustering compression-based method can reduce computation loads by 97%,compared to the conventional calibration method.And the proposed hierarchical heuristic model calibration strategy is capable of accelerating the calibration process after clustering and saves 14.6%of the time costs.

Machine Learning and Deep Learning Methods for Enhancing Building Energy Efficiency and Indoor Environmental Quality – A Review

The built environment sector is responsible for almost one-third of the world’s final energy consumption. Hence, seeking plausible solutions to minimise building energy demands and mitigate adverse environmental impacts is necessary. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as machine and deep learning have been increasingly and successfully applied to develop solutions for the built environment. This review provided a critical summary of the existing literature on the machine and deep learning methods for the built environment over the past decade, with special reference to holistic approaches. Different AI-based techniques employed to resolve interconnected problems related to heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and enhance building performances were reviewed, including energy forecasting and management, indoor air quality and occupancy comfort/satisfaction prediction, occupancy detection and recognition, and fault detection and diagnosis. The present study explored existing AI-based techniques focusing on the framework, methodology, and performance. The literature highlighted that selecting the most suitable machine learning and deep learning model for solving a problem could be challenging. The recent explosive growth experienced by the research area has led to hundreds of machine learning algorithms being applied to building performance-related studies. The literature showed that existing research studies considered a wide range of scope/scales (from an HVAC component to urban areas) and time scales (minute to year). This makes it difficult to find an optimal algorithm for a specific task or case. The studies also employed a wide range of evaluation metrics, adding to the challenge. Further developments and more specific guidelines are required for the built environment field to encourage best practices in evaluating and selecting models. The literature also showed that while machine and deep learning had been successfully applied in building energy efficiency research, most of the studies are still at the experimental or testing stage, and there are limited studies which implemented machine and deep learning strategies in actual buildings and conducted the post-occupancy evaluation.

Simulating dispatchable grid services provided by flexible building loads:State of the art and needed building energy modeling improvements

End-use electrical loads in residential and commercial buildings are evolving into flexible and cost-effective resources to improve electric grid reliability,reduce costs,and support increased hosting of distributed renewable generation.This article reviews the simulation of utility services delivered by buildings for the purpose of electric grid operational modeling.We consider services delivered to(1)the high-voitage bulk power system through the coordinated action of many,distributed building loads working together,and(2)targeted support provided to the operation of low-voltage electric distribution grids.Although an exhaustive exploration is not possible,we emphasize the ancillary services and voltage management buildings can provide and summarize the gaps in our ability to simulate them with traditional building energy modeling(BEM)tools,suggesting pathways for future research and development.