Cara Touretzky will present next Tuesday at 10 AM (Central) on proactive energy management strategies for buildings. Advanced registration is not required. To join the meeting, simply click the WebEx link located at and join with the password "apm2012":

http://apmonitor.com/wiki/index.php/Main/ApplicationWebinars

After the presentation, we'll have a discussion on energy management strategies for buildings. I look forward to your participation. The abstract information is below:

Proactive Energy Management Strategies for Buildings
Symposium on Modeling and Optimization 
Oct 23, 2012, 9 am Mountain / 10 am Central

Cara R. Touretzky* and Michael Baldea
Department of Chemical Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin

Abstract:
Buildings are dynamical systems evolving in a time-varying environment defined by fluctuations in weather, occupancy and energy prices. In the presence of such fluctuations, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems must maintain occupant comfort within acceptable limits at a minimum cost. Model predictive control (MPC) provides a meaningful solution to the building energy management problem because of its ability to address a primary economic objective while satisfying constraints on the system and accounting for forecasts of disturbances (e.g, changes in weather, occupancy).  MPC implementations are vitally dependent on the availability of an accurate building model that can be run rapidly, repeatedly and reliably in real-time. However, detailed design models are of considerable size and complexity and do not lend themselves easily to use in on-line calculations.

We introduce a singular perturbations framework for the dynamic analysis and model reduction of building models. Working with a prototype building, we present a theoretical justification of the empirically acknowledged multiple time scale dynamic response of buildings, and develop a mathematically rigorous methodology for deriving reduced-order models for the dynamics in each time scale. Our analysis accounts for the potential use of Heat Recovery Ventilators (HRVs), and we show that their presence leads to the emergence of a dynamic behavior with three time scales, including an overall, system-wide component which involves both the building and the HVAC system. A simulation case study demonstrates the use of the derived reduced-order models in the synthesis of a nonlinear predictive model-based optimal energy management strategy for a single-zone test building situated on the University of Texas campus. The proposed controller exhibits excellent performance, can easily be executed in real-time and its application results in significant energy savings compared to setpoint tracking strategies.
 
Upcoming Webinars                 

Milan Vukov and Moritz Diehl will present on Nov 6th followed by Selen Cremaschi on Nov 13th.


Best regards,

John Hedengren
Assistant Professor
Brigham Young University
Provo, Utah 84602
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