Energy Management Model for HVAC Control Supported by Reinforcement Learning

Pedro Macieira, Luis Gomes and Zita Vale
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Pedro Macieira: GECAD—Research Group on Intelligent Engineering and Computing for Advanced Innovation and Development, Polytechnic of Porto (P.PORTO), P-4200-072 Porto, Portugal
Luis Gomes: GECAD—Research Group on Intelligent Engineering and Computing for Advanced Innovation and Development, Polytechnic of Porto (P.PORTO), P-4200-072 Porto, Portugal
Zita Vale: GECAD—Research Group on Intelligent Engineering and Computing for Advanced Innovation and Development, Polytechnic of Porto (P.PORTO), P-4200-072 Porto, Portugal

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 24, 1-14

Abstract: Heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) units account for a significant consumption share in buildings, namely office buildings. Therefore, this paper addresses the possibility of having an intelligent and more cost-effective solution for the management of HVAC units in office buildings. The method applied in this paper divides the addressed problem into three steps: (i) the continuous acquisition of data provided by an open-source building energy management systems, (ii) the proposed learning and predictive model able to predict if users will be working in a given location, and (iii) the proposed decision model to manage the HVAC units according to the prediction of users, current environmental context, and current energy prices. The results show that the proposed predictive model was able to achieve a 93.8% accuracy and that the proposed decision tree enabled the maintenance of users’ comfort. The results demonstrate that the proposed solution is able to run in real-time in a real office building, making it a possible solution for smart buildings.

Keywords: building energy management systems; HVAC control; Internet of Things; occupancy prediction; reinforcement learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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