Imperial College London
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Dr Salvador Acha

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering

Senior Research Fellow
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 3379salvador.acha Website CV

 
 
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Location

 

453AACE ExtensionSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Bird:2022:10.1016/j.enbuild.2022.112269,
author = {Bird, M and Daveau, C and O'Dwyer, E and Acha, S and Shah, N},
doi = {10.1016/j.enbuild.2022.112269},
journal = {Energy and Buildings},
pages = {1--13},
title = {Real-world implementation and cost of a cloud-based MPC retrofit for HVAC control systems in commercial buildings},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2022.112269},
volume = {270},
year = {2022}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Many businesses are looking for ways to improve the energy and carbon usage of their buildings, particularly through enhanced data collection and control schemes. In this context, this paper presents a case study of a food-retail building in the UK, detailing the design, installation and cost of a generalisable model predictive control (MPC) framework for its Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system. The hardware/software solution to collect relevant data, as well as the formulation of the MPC scheme, is presented. By utilising cloud-based microservices, this approach can be applied to all modern building management systems with little upfront capital, and an ongoing monthly cost as low as $6.39/month. The MPC scheme calculates the optimal temperature setpoint required for each Air-Handling Unit (AHU) to minimise its overall cost or carbon usage, while ensuring thermal comfort of occupants. Its performance is then compared to the existing legacy controller using a simulation the building’s thermal behaviour. When simulated across two months the MPC approach performed better, able to achieve the same thermal comfort for a lower overall cost. The economic optimisation resulted in an energy saving of 650 kWh, with an associated cost savings of $240 (1.7% compared to the baseline), while the carbon optimisation gave negligible CO2 savings due to the inability of the building to shift heating to low-carbon periods. Findings from this study indicate the potential for improving building performance via MPC strategies but impact will depend on specific building attributes.
AU  - Bird,M
AU  - Daveau,C
AU  - O'Dwyer,E
AU  - Acha,S
AU  - Shah,N
DO  - 10.1016/j.enbuild.2022.112269
EP  - 13
PY  - 2022///
SN  - 0378-7788
SP  - 1
TI  - Real-world implementation and cost of a cloud-based MPC retrofit for HVAC control systems in commercial buildings
T2  - Energy and Buildings
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2022.112269
UR  - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778822004406?via%3Dihub
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/97918
VL  - 270
ER  -
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