Heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems usually account for the highest percentage of overall energy usage in large-sized smart building infrastructures. The performance of HVAC control systems for large buildings strongly depend on the outside environment, building architecture, and (thermal) zone usage pattern of the building. In large buildings, HVAC system with multiple air handling units (AHUs) is required to fulfill the cooling/heating requirements. In the present work, we propose an energy-aware building resource allocation and economic model predictive control (eMPC) framework for multi-AHU-based HVAC system. The energy consumption of a multi-AHU-based HVAC system significantly depends on how long the AHUs are running, which again is governed by the zone usage demands. Our approach comprises a two-step hierarchical technique where we first minimize the running time of AHUs by suitably allocating building resources (thermal zones) to usage demands for zones. Next, we formulate a finite receding horizon control problem for trading off energy consumption against thermal comfort during HVAC operations. Given a high-level building specification and usage demand, our computer-aided design framework generates building thermal models, allocates usage demands, formulates the control scheme, and simulates it to generate power consumption statistics for the given building with usage demands. We believe that the proposed framework will help in early analysis during the design phase of energy-aware building architecture and HVAC control. The framework can also be useful from a building operator point of view for energy-aware HVAC control as well as for satisfying smart grid demand-response events by HVAC system peak power reduction through automated control actions.

中文翻译：

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用于节能智能楼宇自动化的分级 HVAC 控制方案

在大型智能建筑基础设施中，供暖通风和空调 (HVAC) 系统通常占总能源使用的最高比例。大型建筑物的 HVAC 控制系统的性能在很大程度上取决于外部环境、建筑物结构和建筑物的（热）区域使用模式。在大型建筑物中，需要具有多个空气处理单元 (AHU) 的 HVAC 系统来满足冷却/加热要求。在目前的工作中，我们为基于多 AHU 的 HVAC 系统提出了一种能源感知建筑资源分配和经济模型预测控制 (eMPC) 框架。基于多 AHU 的 HVAC 系统的能耗很大程度上取决于 AHU 的运行时间，而这又取决于区域使用需求。我们的方法包括两步分层技术，我们首先通过适当地分配建筑资源（热区）来满足区域的使用需求，从而最大限度地减少 AHU 的运行时间。接下来，我们制定了一个有限后退水平控制问题，以在 HVAC 运行期间权衡能源消耗与热舒适性。给定高层建筑规范和使用需求，我们的计算机辅助设计框架生成建筑热模型，分配使用需求，制定控制方案，并对其进行模拟，以生成具有使用需求的给定建筑的功耗统计数据。我们相信，所提出的框架将有助于在节能建筑架构和 HVAC 控制的设计阶段进行早期分析。