Energy-efficient building management via model predictive control

Abstract

The growing world population and energy consumption, along with the depletion of fossil energy resources and increasing concern regarding the pollution of the environment, make the world-energy problem the largest challenge for technology in the forthcoming decades [1]. Distributed generation could play a major role in the technological changes of the new electricity service paradigm. The use of localized energy sources is only one of the faces of energy management in buildings. A large part of the produced energy is used for heating and cooling systems, in order to maintain acceptable levels of comfort for the occupants of the apartments (hereafter referred to as "users"). Therefore, at a local level, there is a need for the definition and the testing of intelligent algorithms that can automatically manage distributed energy sources, at the same time taking into account the management of heating/ cooling systems.