Intelligent Computing in Engineering - ICE08

Intelligent Control of Energy - A Reality for Building Management Systems

I Packham, N McNulty, Y Vanderstockt, M Byrne Lightwave Technologies Ltd, NovaUCD, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. ian.packham@lwavetech.com

Abstract. This paper describes a system called Intelligent Control of Energy (ICE) that controls the energy consumption in buildings using hybrid intelligent computing techniques. A hardware protocol is used that allows ICE to interface with a building management system (BMS) over the internet. ICE has an advantage over traditional BMS optimizers because it uses forecast weather to predict internal conditions and uses intelligent techniques, thus providing more accurate results. Some of the research issues around data preprocessing and the hybrid techniques used are also examined. The architecture was initially designed with a practical application in mind and this paper shows that intelligent techniques can be deployed in a commercial situation; the architecture allows further features and extension of the ideas to be added when they have been fully tested and researched. The environmental and monetary drivers in this area provide a platform to push the boundaries of intelligent computing research.

1 Introduction The drive to save energy has become a global issue and people strive to make this a reality in all walks of life. Lightwave Technologies has researched, developed and released a product that saves energy in buildings using hybrid intelligent computing techniques. The product called the Intelligent Control of Energy (ICE) can potentially interface with any Building Management System (BMS) in the world over the internet. Through the BMS, ICE directly affects the activation and setpoint control of the heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment (HVAC). Energy savings are made by learning a buildings thermodynamics and response to the HVAC, training various computationally intelligent algorithms and sending control decisions back via the BMS that optimize energy usage whilst maintaining comfort conditions inside the building. Results have shown good accuracy for achieving comfort levels whilst reducing energy consumption. In this paper, the limitations of current BMS systems are discussed and the potential for artificial intelligent control and machine learning techniques to impact on this important area are evaluated. Despite a fairly large number of theoretical studies that sometimes use simulated models to show the advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) for BMS systems, there has been very little application of the techniques in live working systems. ICE was designed with a practical application in mind from the start. The paper describes the architecture and basic algorithms behind ICE and preliminary results on real test buildings. This robust architecture allows future algorithms and extensions to be added to the ICE feature list. Future work is described in the concluding sections of this paper. The fertileness of this area both for theoretical and practical application of computationally intelligent techniques is underlined. There
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are also unquestionable motives that will drive such research forward due to the environmental and financial benefits that such research will reap. 2 Review of Traditional Artificial Intelligent Techniques for HVAC Control Most commercial buildings contain a centralised BMS that allows a facility manager to set times for starting and stopping heating and cooling plant in the building as well as the temperature setpoints for equipment and areas inside the building. The BMS is usually reading all the available control data (temperature, humidity) and the on/off status of the equipment in the building such as boilers, chillers, Air Handling Units (AHUs) etc. Collectively, this equipment is known as Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC), see Underwood (1999). Sizing of HVAC equipment usually follows established guideline like those published by ASHRAE (2007). At a low level, equipment is controlled by control loops such as PI / PID (proportional, integral, derivative (Gerry 1987)). However, the high-level parameters for the controls, such as timers and internal setpoints are set by the control engineer or facility manager using their judgment and experience. If the facility management (FM) team has the time to assess and experiment with all the controls in the building, it could be run in a fairly efficient manner in terms of energy consumption. However, in practice, the FM in most buildings do not have the time or experience to optimize the controls. For start and stop times, usually just one setting is used for each major season during the year. This means that variable weather patterns, seen in many climates, are not taken into account by the BMS. Many major BMS manufacturers have developed start / stop optimizers that take into account the outside weather conditions. Usually this involves a small time window of data from an outside temperature sensor reading placed on the roof of the building. The relationship between the outside temperature and times for boilers or chillers to reach setpoint temperature is learned over a few previous days (Ardehali and Smith 1997, Kohenen et al 1991). This crude technique suffers from inaccuracy due to the small amount of historical data. Also in climates where weather conditions change dramatically during the day, potential differences in the future weather are not taken into account. In practice many optimizers are turned off by the FM because of the lack of accuracy; or if they are used, large time parameters are kept in order to ensure the heating / cooling systems reach the right temperature. Because the BMS systems are continuously reading control data from the HVAC equipment, there is a large resource of data available in many commercial buildings around the world. Once collected and stored centrally, such data can be used to improve the performance of energy management systems. Any traditional or intelligent technique could be used to optimize the setpoints or on/off times of the system by learning from the historical data and applying the learned rules to the present situation. There has been a lot of research using intelligent computing to control HVAC systems. Many of these use a model of a building using a theoretical approach and show how the new approach can improve the control of efficiency of the building. For example Curtiss et al (1993) used neural networks to control HVAC resulting in improved control, Curtiss et al (1994) gives a practical application of this work. Lam (1995) also used genetic algorithms to control a HVAC system. In these cases an idealized model is used. It is not difficult, however, to see that in a live building, where the historical data has been saved over a period of time, the in391

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formation about how the building reacts to outside weather conditions and internal gains due to occupancy already exists. Hence it is not necessary to build a model, but to use the historical data to train the algorithms and predict how the building will behave. In the past, it was argued that Neural Networks and AI techniques outperform conventional statistical methods because they cannot deal with non linear problem spaces (Papalexopoulos et al 1994). AI techniques were developed primarily from multiple practical applications and the theory was developed afterwards, although there is now substantial theoretical work in computational neuroscience. Conversely, statistical theory has been developed from the theoretical viewpoint primarily and its practical application is now being seen. Support Vector Machines (SVM) in particular can deal with non linear problems and in most cases outperform traditional neural networks. Vapnik (1995) wrote statistical learning theory which reduces the error on unseen test sample based on the seen observations, as opposed to NN and regression techniques that reduce the error only on seen observations. Practical application of SVM has also been seen in relation to HVAC research; Charytoniuk et al (1999) used kernel density estimation to accurately forecast demand in power distribution systems. However, in another application to supply chain demand forecasting, Carbonneau et al (2007) found that while SVM outperformed recurrent neural networks, there was no significant improvement over multiple linear regression. This section has described various theoretical and practical applications of intelligent computing techniques to HVAC control. The next section describes the ICE system that primarily uses neural networks to optimize HVAC control in live buildings, supported by genetic algorithms and fuzzy logic. These techniques were chosen for evaluation because of their robustness and adaptability to varying input data whilst requiring limited attention to algorithm parameters. The success of this system shows that further application of other machine learning methods such as SVM can be easily performed. A hybrid of intelligent control techniques could then be designed for a higher level of optimal control. 3 Description of ICE System Architecture As stated previously, modern BMSs continuously monitor and record data from all parts of the buildings HVAC system. The protocols that control the data are usually proprietary, but recently the BMS manufacturers have realized the need for multiple types of systems to interact. Hence protocols such as BACnet and Modbus can now interface with Trend and Cylon BMS systems. ICE uses a hardware protocol to interface with all the major BMS systems used throughout the world. Figure 1 shows a typical set up where the hardware box is labeled CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) that could read data from a number of buildings For a large building, a number of CPE boxes could be used to read the data. The CPE is then directly accessible to the internet and the ICE system can read to and write from the CPE box and thus the BMS. A secure, password protected, connection is used with the possibility of encryption for the data packets if required. The data is saved to a database and processed by the ICE system. The control decisions and results are also sent to the ICE user interface that uses HTML and is accessible over the internet. This allows customers to view the state of their BMS and the ICE system from any location in the world. Currently information is not shared between buildings for data protection reasons, however, this is an interesting area for further
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research, in particular to consider how data from one building and environment may relate to another building in a different environment. Figure 2 shows a high level view of the ICE architecture. The figure shows the BMS interface, through which ICE records data to a centralized database. ICE also records forecast weather conditions from a weather station close to the building. The ICE software uses the data to train neural networks, genetic algorithms and fuzzy logic to learn the buildings internal response to equipment being turned on and off, taking into account the predicted external conditions. Once the algorithms are trained over a few weeks of data, ICE can send control decisions through the Core Interface that optimally turns on or off equipment whilst maintaining the required temperatures during working hours inside the building.

Remote ICE Patform

ICE Database

Customer WEB User Interface

LAN or WAN (Internet) Fig. 1. A typical setup for ICE. The CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) box connects to the buildings BMS Building Management System). Each CPE is then directly accessible to the Internet and thus the ICE Platform and Customer WEB Interface.

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Fig. 2. The ICE Architecture, high level diagram.

The ICE command interface, shown in Figure 2, ensures that all jobs and data are synchronized. New schedules for the BMS plant can be input into the system using the ICE user interface, which also displays the control decisions and results. An additional component is the ICE management interface, that allows users to set up a building prior to ICE control. All the required zones and sensor points inside the building are identified and classified, enabling the use of generic data holders for subsequent training and control by ICE. 4 Description of ICE Algorithms The description of ICE algorithms can be limited to general concepts because there is a patent pending on some aspects that are commercially sensitive. 4.1 Data Preprocessor In order to train the intelligent algorithms, the data needs to be preprocessed and important variables identified. A number of different methods were employed to evaluate the accuracy of different combinations of input variables. For example, one goal for ICE was to predict the inside temperature of a zone and discover which variables in the BMS provide better predictions, in other words, which variables is the inside temperature sensitive to. In practice, this is a very difficult question to answer because the difference in error between the alternative methods and number of variables used was seen to be insignificant after initial analysis. The preprocessor is designed to provide data to intelligent techniques as described in the following sections, so the error on training instances and testing instances was used to compare
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models and assess the sensitivity of variables. A tree-based traversal method was used that successively eliminated inputs until the most sensitive inputs were found that could successfully model the data. Both a neural network and a fuzzy logic controller were evaluated for this purpose, see Hani et al (2008) for more details of the controller employed. The processing time for the fuzzy logic controller in particular grew logarithmically to the number of variables being evaluated, hence even for a small number of variables, trying to solve with this brute forced approach would took an unreasonable amount of time. Alternative methods such as ReliefF (Kononenko et al 1996) were also used. Because this method is statistical, it performs at a reasonable speed and returned results that ranked the input variables in terms of sensitivity to the output. However, for all these methods, when the model is actually deployed, very little difference between the training or testing error is seen. In practice a set of variables chosen by experts including those variables consistently suggested by all methods described above were found to give satisfactory and accurate results. 4.2 Optimizer and Predictor Network Figure 3 shows the architecture of one hybrid Optimiser that uses Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms and Fuzzy Logic to optimise energy usage whilst predicting future start times or setpoints. In practice this type of architecture has been used for optimal start and stop algorithms (without the fuzzy logic module) as shown in Figure 4. This architecture is close to that used in Curtiss (1993, 1994), but with some additional features. Inputs to the training neural network are the uncontrolled weather parameters such as outside temperature; the other variables are future values such as inside temperature in the next hour that are known from historical data. The output is energy consumption or amount of heat used in a certain time. After training a neural network with these inputs, the predictor network uses the same weights from the training network. The uncontrolled inputs are the same, however the optimised variables now become the setpoint to reach in a certain time. The optimised variables are varied and different values tried through the optimisation algorithm (in this case the GA) until values that return minimum energy consumption are found. There are often constraints on the optimised values (setpoint should be between 20 and 22 degC or what is the minimum energy consumption required to reach 20 degC from 17 degC, for example) that can be incorporated into the GA. In this way the optimal time to reach a certain temperature (either heating or cooling to this temperature) can be returned. The architecture shown in Figure 4 can therefore be used to optimize the setpoint inside a zone of a building. The objective is to get as close to a certain comfort level as possible by changing the setpoint whilst minimizing energy consumption. This problem is described further in Figure 6 and Section 5. Improving comfort level nearly always means increasing energy consumption; the GA is good at resolving such conflicts.

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Fig. 3. A possible hybrid architecture of the ICE Algorithms.

4.3 Recursive Predictive Optimal Control The recursive predictive optimal control algorithm uses Neural Networks only (see Figure 5) adapted from Gradient Based technique (Kohonen et al 1991). The training network takes input values at a certain time slot with the output as the controlled temperature a short time interval in the future (say 5 or 15 minutes). Once trained, the weights of this neural network are called recursively with input parameters, using predicted values from the weather forecast and historical data from the BMS. A new inside temperature will be returned at each time step and this is then fed into the next time step, so that temperature some time into the future can be predicted. In this way optimal stop and optimal start times can be estimated from current conditions and predicted weather variables.

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Fig. 4. The neural network with GA learning used to minimize energy consumption and optimize setpoints.

Fig. 5. The recursive network used for optimal start and stop algorithms.

5 Practical Example and Results The recursive start and stop algorithms have a target setpoint to reach by the start or end of working hours, known as the high or low comfort levels. Figure 6 and Table 1 show an example of ICE control for a zone that requires heating to achieve the low comfort level (in this case 18 degC) by 9am. Without ICE in control, the BMS starts at the defaults time of 6.30am, however, after training and deployment, the ICE algorithm is suggesting a start time of 7.12am. This start time will vary due to the outside and internal conditions as expected. In the same way, the end of working hours is given as 7pm. ICE needs to calculate the stop time to ensure that the temperature inside the zone will reach 18 degC by this time and calculates 4:35pm as an optimal stop time. Usually, the BMS will carry on requesting heat from the boilers until 7am without ICE.
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The savings due to ICE can be calculated in terms of time that equipment is not used over the usual BMS run times (assuming no optimizer is used in the BMS). Thus, the saving in terms of time shown in Figure 6 is 3 hours, 7 minutes. The total time the building would have been in control is End of Working Hours Start of Working Hours = 12.5 hours, so the saving in terms of time is 24.9%. The actual energy saving may be different to this unless the HVAC equipment uses energy at a constant rate. Boilers, chillers and AHUs with variable speed drives do not use energy at a constant rate and may use more energy over a shorter space of time to achieve comfort levels. In practice, the accuracy of these decisions has been good and comfort has not been affected in test buildings.

Fig. 6. Pictorial representation of ICE control used on Web User Interface. For Key, see Table 1. Table 1. Key to Figure 6. A B C D E Default Start Time ICE Optimized Start Time Start of Working Hours ICE Optimized Stop Time End of Working Hours F G H I J Lowest Inside Temperature Allowed Low Comfort Level High Comfort Level ICE Optimized Setpoint Energy Saving / Comfort Level Slider

Letters I and J in Figure 6 also show how the user can control comfort using optimal setpoint control. The level of comfort required between the high and low comfort levels can be ad398

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justed using this control. The setpoint is then optimized using this objective whilst minimizing energy consumption. The evaluation of energy savings for setpoint control or in the case of equipment with variable speeds can be performed using degree day analysis. Degree day analysis shows the energy savings normalized by a baseline computed before a change has been made. The baseline is computed using either heating or cooling degree days, that is the number of degrees the average daily outside temperature is below or above a given threshold. Energy consumption before the change (in this case the deployment of ICE) can be plotted against degree days and a regression line computed. The equation of the line allows an expected energy usage to be computed for a given degree day value. Following the installation of ICE, the actual energy consumption can be compared with the expected value to compute the saving. ICE has been installed in a number of occupied buildings in the UK and Ireland; energy savings computed using the degree day method have been seen in the range of 10 20% on a buildings total energy bill. Utility bills in commercial buildings can range from 100,000 to over 1,000,000, so the saving is significant in energy, emissions and money. Further validation of ICE savings is being performed by the British Research Establishment (BRE). See Table 2 for some actual saving results.
Table 2. ICE Results in Test Buildings.

Building Location: Size: Energy Consumed before ICE: Energy Consumed after ICE: Savings kWh Energy Spend before ICE: Energy Spend after ICE: Savings /

Dublin, Ireland 16,000 sq.m 397,170 kWh per month 340,060 kWh per month 57,110 kWh per month 14.4% 20,580 per month 17,750 per month 2,830 per month 13.7%

London, United Kingdom 20,000 sq.m 684,790 kWh per month 605,230 kWh per month 79,560 kWh per month 11.6% 35,210 per month 32,130 per month 3,080 per month 8.7%

6 Further Work and Conclusions As well as optimizing the start and stop of equipment and internal comfort levels of zones inside a building, in the future ICE will optimize the setpoints and sequencing strategy of equipment. Again, algorithms will be trained to learn the optimal control strategy for starting the various plant inside a building using a hybrid neural network and genetic algorithm technique. Predicted weather conditions will also be essential in determining optimal setpoint settings for equipment, so that boilers, for example, are not overheated on warm days and chillers are held off if not required. In addition, ICE will stop boilers and chillers running at the same time, if possible; a common fault in many buildings. This further work will result in improved comfort levels and increased energy savings.
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This paper has described the ICE (Intelligent Control of Energy) system that has been shown to reduce energy consumption in buildings whilst maintaining comfort levels. The system has been deployed in a number of real buildings, showing that the practical application of intelligent computing techniques is a realistic objective. The architecture employed means that any building that has a BMS system and internet access can be controlled and that additional features can be easily added to increase energy savings in the future. Improved saving may also be realized following research and application of support vector machine or kernel methods; integrating these and further intelligent techniques into the hybrid optimizer can only improve the decision making features of ICE. The scope for additional research and development in this field is far reaching as the potential to reduce energy consumption has real environmental and financial impact. ICE can currently only learn about what is known inside a building from the data. If a major change in the building dynamics is likely like occupancy change or plant refit, ICE cannot predict very accurately how this will affect the model. Neural networks can only generalize to a certain extent. In order to evaluate the effect of algorithms outside the known boundaries of a building, even kernel methods may not provide enough generalization. In this case linking ICE to an accurate simulation model may be necessary. Lightwave are working with the University of Strathclyde (see Clarke et al 2002) to research this possibility. References
Ardehali, M.M. and Smith, T.F. (1997) Evaluation of HVAC System OperationalStrategies for Commercial Buildings, Energy Conservation and Management, Vol. 38, No.3, pp.225-236. ASHRAE, (2007) The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. Standards & Guidelines, available: http://www.ashrae.org/technology/page/548 Clarke, J.A., Cockroft, J., Conner, S., Hand, J.W., Kelly, N.J., Moore, R., OBrien, T. and Strachan, P., (2002) Simulation-Assisted Control in Buildings Energy Management Systems, Energy and Buildings Vol. 34, pp. 993-940. Carbonneau, R., Laframboise, K. and Vahidov, R. (2007) Application of Machine Learning Techniques for Supply Chain Demand Forecasting, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol 184, pp. 1140-1154. Charytoniuk, W., Chen, M.S., Kotas, O. and Van Olinda, P. (1999) Demand Forecasting in Power Distribution Systems using Nonparameteric Probability Density Estimation, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 1200-1206. Curtiss, P., Kreider, J. and Brandemuehl, J. (1993) Adaptive Control of HVAC Processes using Predictive Neural Networks. ASHRAE Transactions, Vol. 99, Part 1, pp. 496-504. Curtiss, P., Kreider, J. and Brandemuehl, J. (1994) Energy Management in Ccentral HVAC Plants using Neural Networks, ASHRAE Transactions, Vol. 100, Part 1, pp. 476-493. Hagras, H., Packham, I., Vanderstockt, Y., McNulty, N., Vadher, A. and Doctor, F. (2008) An Intelligent Fuzzy Based Agent Approach for Energy Management in Commercial Buildings, International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ2008), Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, 2008. Accepted for Publication. Gerry, J.P., (1987) A Comparison of PID Control algorithms, Control Engineering, Mar., p103. See also: http://www.expertune.com/artCE87.html (All Controllers Are Not Created Equal). Kohonen, R., Laitinen, A., Aho, I., Madjidi, M., and Stephan W. (1991) Study on Optimal Start/Stop Operation of Hydronic Heating Systems, Building Simulation, Nice, France, August 20-22, pp. 175-186. Kononenko, I, Robnik-Sikonja, M. and Pompe U. (1996), ReliefF for Estimation and Discretization of Attributes in Classification, Regression and ILP Problems, in A. Ramsay (ed.): Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, Applications: Proceddings of AIMSA'96, IOS Press, pp.31-40. Lam, N. (1995) Intelligent Computer Control of Air Conditioning Systems Based on Genetic Algorithm and Classifier System", Proceedings of the 1995 Building Simulation Conference, Wisconsin, pp. 151-157. 400

Intelligent Computing in Engineering - ICE08 Papalexopoulos, A., How, S. and Peng, T. (1994) An Implementation of a Neural Network Based Load Forecasting Model for the EMS, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, No.9, pp. 1956-1962. Underwood, C.P. (1999) HVAC Control Systems: Modelling, Analysis and Design, Taylor & Francis, Oxon. Vapnik, V.N. (1995) The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory, Springer.

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