Smart Building Energy Management for Grid-Responsive Load Shedding
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing building management systems lack integration with smart grid components and data, limiting their ability to optimize energy use and efficiency in response to real-time energy pricing and availability.
Innovation Solution
A building manager system that includes a communications interface for receiving information from a smart energy grid, an integrated control layer for managing building subsystems, a fault detection and diagnostics layer for identifying and addressing faults, and a demand response layer for adjusting energy use based on smart grid data.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If building management systems are integrated with smart grid components and data, then energy efficiency and optimization capability are improved, but system complexity and integration requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The building management system is divided into distinct functional layers including a communications interface layer for smart grid data reception, a control layer for building subsystem management, and a demand response layer for energy optimization. This segmentation allows each layer to handle specific tasks independently, reducing overall integration complexity while maintaining energy efficiency improvements.
Solution Approach 2:
A dedicated communications interface acts as an intermediary component that receives and processes smart grid information before transmitting it to the control layer. This intermediary layer simplifies integration by providing a standardized interface between the smart grid infrastructure and existing building management systems, reducing the complexity burden.
2Loss of energy
If real-time adjustments to control algorithms are made based on smart grid data, then energy cost optimization is improved, but processing requirements and system responsiveness demands increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-processes smart grid data through the communications interface layer, organizing and validating information before it reaches the control algorithms. This preliminary action reduces the computational burden on the control layer, enabling real-time energy cost optimization without excessive processing power requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The demand response layer implements feedback mechanisms that continuously monitor energy costs and automatically adjust control algorithms based on received smart grid data. This feedback loop enables real-time optimization of energy costs while distributing processing requirements across multiple layers, preventing any single component from becoming a bottleneck.
Data Source
AI summary
A building manager includes a communications interface configured to receive time-of-use information from a smart energy grid and a processing circuit configured to process the time-of-use information received from the smart energy grid to generate load shedding decisions for building subsystems or devices including determining when to utilize energy from energy storage equipment. The processing circuit is configured to determine an amount of greenhouse gas emissions corresponding to the load shedding decisions and convert the amount of greenhouse gas emissions into tradable carbon credits. The processing circuit is configured to generate a graphical user interface including modules indicating the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, the tradable carbon credits, or energy savings resulting from the load shedding decisions. The processing circuit is configured to rearrange, resize, or reconfigure the modules or change the modules for different modules in response to a user input or selection provided via the graphical user interface.