University of Colorado

Qcoefficient, Inc

Other

Gregor P Henze

Vincent J Cushing

Charles D Corbin

Charles J Sloup

Gregory S Pavlak

Daniel Karnes

Sandro Plamp

Building energy consumption is controlled by operating energy consumptive devices according to a control plan determined by: using a software building model to simulate building behavior over a simulation period in accordance with predicted circumstances and in accordance with multiple control plans; for at least one of the control plans, re-simulating building behavior a plurality of times each with a different perturbation imposed, with each perturbation corresponding to a different degree of participation in a grid market, to thereby determine an amount of participation in the grid market available to the building; resimulating building behavior a plurality of times imposing said determined participation amount as a constraint; and selecting an optimal control plan based on the last round of resimulations. The selected optimal control plan may also be derived through combining buildings or energy response attributes associated with different buildings to form synthetic resources for optimal deployment to the grid.

Systems and methods using decision analysis for controlling energy consumption and facilitating building participation in ancillary energy markets

Buildings or facilities containing energy consuming or energy generating devices may be optimized for efficient energy usage and distribution. Energy consumption or generation by a building or components may be controlled by a system comprising a building model for predicting behavior of the building given predicted future conditions and possible control inputs. An optimization component running an optimization algorithm in conjunction with the building model may evaluate the predicted building behavior in accordance with at least one criterion and determine a desired set of control inputs. Commercial building thermal mass may be harnessed to continuously and optimally integrate large commercial building HVAC operations with electric grid operations and markets in large metropolitan areas. The service may be deployed using scalable, automated, web-based technology.

Integration of commercial building operations with electric system operations and markets

A building heating/cooling system energy optimization method for a building having a heating/cooling system includes the steps of providing a mathematical model of the heating/cooling system, obtaining real-time weather information, reading the input water temperature (IWT), the output water temperature (OWT) and the supply air temperature (SA) output to the building, periodically transferring the IWT, the OWT and the SA to an optimization system which is operative to analyze the real-time data in coordination with the mathematical model by assigning at least three selected values in a range surrounding and including the current values of each of the IWT, the OWT and the SA and calculating the efficiency profile of the components of the heating/cooling system for each of the selected values, then cooperatively optimizing and selecting those values calculated to provide the highest efficiency profile, then periodically resetting the system values to those selected by the optimization system.

Real-time global optimization of building setpoints and sequence of operation

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Boulder, CO, United States of America

Gregor P Henze