ENERGY AND INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT MANAGEMENT CONTROL SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR BUILDINGS AND CAMPUSES
An elective and private incrementally deployed, incrementally modifiable, relatively inexpensive building control system that provides for a range of energy and environmental capabilities including room and building environment sensing (one or more of temperature, humidity, air quality, etc.), statistical processing software, modeling software, analysis software, information visualization software, decision support software, data logging, storage and recall, control, optimal control, and interfacing with existing building systems (HVAC, solar, valves, power systems, etc. The invention can be configured to include incremental or trial deployment of equipment and software; exploratory or special-purpose information gathering; analysis, modeling, or simulation of current, past, or ongoing energy usage, loss, or waste as well as air temperature and air quality distributions, impacts of changes to a building, facilities, policies, or operations; and design of optimal control for building operation.
1 . A method for implementing an automatic control system for a building having an exterior and an interior, the method comprising:
producing interior measurement data using at least a first plurality of interior sensors distributed within an interior of a building;
producing exterior measurement data using at least a first plurality of exterior sensors on the exterior of the building;
transporting the interior measurement data and the exterior measurement data using at least one network; and
utilizing the interior measurement data and exterior measurement data to control at least one controllable subsystem within the building according to a control policy, wherein the control policy is responsive to at least two of building energy usage, building energy loss, building air temperature, and building air quality.
2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: analyzing one or more building quality factors including at least building energy usage, building energy loss, building air temperature, and building air quality using data analysis software.
3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the building quality factors further include the influence of external environment quality.
4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: modeling at least one of: air flow models, energy usage models, energy systems models, heat-transport models, heat-flux propagation models, air quality models and human health models.
5 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: responding to at least one of stored past measurement data, statistical processing software, data analysis software, data modeling software, simulation software, decision support software, system-internal databases, building-internal databases, campus databases, and cloud-based databases.
6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising modeling software for modeling of impacts of potential changes to the control policy.
7 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: simulating impacts of potential changes to the control policy using simulation software.
8 . The method of claim 5 , wherein the decision support software receives as inputs one or more of: the measurement data, stored past measurement data, and one or more decision policies, and for providing as output for display on a display console.
9 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the decision support software comprises multiple criterion decision support.
10 . The method of claim 8 , wherein the decision support software further comprises at least one of output of a variable-policy control system, output of data modeling software, output of data analysis software, and output of simulation software.
11 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: deploying a sequence of stages over a period of time, at least one of the stages including the deployment of at least a second plurality of interior sensors distributed within an interior of the building.
12 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: deploying a sequence of stages over a period of time, at least one of the stages including the deployment of at least a second plurality of exterior sensors on the exterior of the building.
13 . The method of claim 1 further comprising: deploying a sequence of stages over a period of time, at least one of the stages including the deployment of an additional software system.
14 . The method of claim 1 , wherein building air quality comprises at least one of humidity level, impurities level, oxygen level, carbon dioxide level, pollen level, dust level, chemical level, and particulate level.
15 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the method is used to determine a control policy for used by the automatic control system.
16 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one controllable subsystem comprises a remotely-controllable air vent.
17 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one controllable subsystem comprises a controllable valve.
18 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one controllable subsystem comprises a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system.
19 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one controllable subsystem comprises a solar energy system.
20 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one controllable subsystem comprises a power system.