Benchmarking Approaches for Assessing the Performance of Building Control Strategies: A Review

Clara Ceccolini and Roozbeh Sangi
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Clara Ceccolini: Bosch Thermotechnology GmbH, Junkersstraße 20-24, 73243 Wernau, Germany
Roozbeh Sangi: Bosch Thermotechnology GmbH, Junkersstraße 20-24, 73243 Wernau, Germany

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-30

Abstract: In the last few decades, researchers have shown that advanced building controllers can reduce energy consumption without negatively impacting occupants’ wellbeing and help to manage building systems, which are becoming increasingly complex. Nevertheless, the lack of benefit awareness and demonstration projects undermines stakeholders’ trust, justifying the reluctance to approve new controls in the industry. Therefore, it is necessary to support the development of controls through solid arguments testifying to the performance gain that can be achieved. However, the absence of standardized and systematic testing methods limits the generalization of results and the ability to make fair cross-study comparisons. This study presents an overview of the different benchmarking approaches used to assess control performance. Our goal is to highlight trends, limitations, and controversies through analytics to support the definition of best practices, which remains a widely discussed topic in this research area. We aim to focus on simulation-based benchmarking, which is regarded as a promising solution to overcome the time and cost requirements related to field or hardware-in-the-loop testing. We identify and investigate four key steps relating to virtual benchmarking: defining the key performance indicators, specifying the reference control, characterizing the test scenarios, and post-processing the results. This work confirmed the expected heterogeneity, underlined recurrent features with the help of analytics, and recognized limits and open challenges.

Keywords: control test bench; control benchmarking; building controls; HVAC control; building simulation (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: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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