Method and system of ventilation for a healthy home configured for efficient energy usage and conservation of energy resources

Abstract

A method provides a ventilation control compliant with an adopted ventilation standard for efficient energy usage and conservation of energy resources. The method includes operating a home energy system to generate solar energy within a daily active period and draw fresh air from an ambient region, setting a daily ventilation period as a fractional period of a day, the ventilation period being coincident with the active period during a heating period for the home or a time period after the active period during a cooling period for the home, determining a target volume, determining a flow rate for delivering the fresh air during the ventilation period, performing ventilation in the ventilation period to deliver the fresh air into the home using the flow rate, and monitoring an accumulated total ventilation volume of the delivered fresh air until the accumulated total ventilation volume is within a vicinity of a target volume.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]Not ApplicableSTATEMENT AS TO RIGHTS TO INVENTIONS MADE UNDER FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT[0002]Not ApplicableREFERENCE TO A “SEQUENCE LISTING,” A TABLE, OR A COMPUTER PROGRAM LISTING APPENDIX SUBMITTED ON A COMPACT DISK[0003]Not ApplicableBACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0004]The present invention relates to operations of a home energy system. More particularly, the present invention provides a method and related system for providing daily home ventilation compliant with the ASHRAE 62.2 standard. Merely, by way of example, the present invention has been applied to integrate daily home ventilation control in association with an operation of the home energy system for utilizing solar thermal energy to provide space heating and space cooling for the home with up to 80% energy usage saving for home ventilation, but it would be recognized that the invention has a much broader range of applications.[0005]Over the past centuries, th...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015]Many benefits are achieved by way of the present invention over conventional techniques. For example, the present technique provides an easy way to implement a home ventilation operation using an integrated home energy system. One or more embodiments provide a method for performing intermittent ventilation in a specified ventilation period that can be substantially shorter than a full day 24 hours time and having achieved a ventilation result compliant with states adopted ventilation standard such as ASHRAE standard 62.2 and the likes for a healthy residential home. The method adds a level of ventilation control logic within a system controller configured to operate the home energy system for providing native space heating or space cooling to coordinate with the home ventilation and other utility applications. Additionally, the method provides an economic ventilation process that takes advantage of the native system operation for providing space heating and space cooling by associating the daily ventilation period to the system active period to utilize solar energy. This allows home owner who chooses the home energy system provided according to this invention for utilizing solar energy in home utility applications without need of adding extra mechanical equipments for ventilation, instead, with options for reducing the size of heating equipment and air conditioner. This method further avoids paying high energy penalty to force the system to deliver hot air into the home in cooling season or cold air into the home under space heating in a heating season, instead of using coordination of the ventilation with the native space heating and space cooling to have substantially free ventilation. In a preferred embodiment, the present method and system provides for fresh air within a home without additional cooling or heating loads or the like, which leads to increased use of energy. That is, fresh air is provided without additional energy or with less energy use. The embodiments of the invention allow 60% or more saving of energy usage for home ventilation comparing to conventional methods. In another preferred embodiment, the present method and system provides for fresh air within a home without introducing additional dusts, particles, and moistures that will affect the air quality within the interior space of the home. Depending upon the embodiment, one or more of these benefits may be achieved. These and other benefits will be described in more detail throughout the present specification and more particularly below.

Problems solved by technology

Obviously, our daily lives depend, for the most part, upon oil or other forms of fossil fuel, which are becoming scarce as it becomes depleted.

The increase in temperature is expected to cause extreme weather conditions and a drastic size reduction of the polar ice caps, which in turn will lead to higher sea levels and an increase in the rate of warming.

Ultimately, other effects include mass species extinctions, and possibly other uncertainties that may be detrimental to human beings.

Although solar panels have been used successful for certain applications, there are still certain limitations.

Solar cells are often costly.

Depending upon the geographic region, there are often financial subsidies from governmental entities for purchasing solar panels, which often cannot compete with the direct purchase of electricity from public power companies.

Additionally, most PV solar energy systems only utilize about 15% of the captured sun's energy.

Moreover, conventional solar energy systems are also difficult to maintain and monitor for operational accuracy.

Once a solar energy system has been installed, there is simply no easy way to monitor the accuracy of energy production.

In particular, a healthy home system is provided to operate an energy transfer module coupled to other traditional building utility modules to deliver solar thermal energy converted from both PV solar panels and solar thermal panels for home utility applications such as electricity supply, water heating, home heating, home cooling, and ventilation, there is no existing method to set or program the control setting for automatically adjusting building comfort in terms of heating, cooling, and ventilation for maximizing the utilization efficiency of the captured solar energy.

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