Building automation

Buildings constructed before 1979 in Denmark are responsible for 75% of the total energy consumption of the sector. However, many post-occupancy comfort studies of energy renovated dwellings have documented elevated temperatures not only during the summer period but also during the transition months. Ventilative cooling can be an energy-efficient solution to avoid overheating in energy renovated residences.

Aim of this work has been to determine the effectiveness of evaporative cooling and ventilation control strategies on a case study to ensure an adequate combination between energy efficiency and high levels of indoor comfort.
The case study has been a kindergarten, situated in the context of the climate continental Mediterranean area (Cerignola, Italy, 41°16'00"N, 15°54'00"E, 120 m asl), oriented on an east/west axis, classrooms south faced, and the services zone to north.

Natural ventilation is increasingly considered one of the most efficient passive solutions to improve thermal comfort in buildings. However in order to support its planning and implementation, quantitative analysis on airflow paths and heat-airflow building interactions are needed. This requires an adequate accounting of both internal effects, from building layout and structure, and external forcings from atmospheric factors.
This paper has dealt to analyze the potential of building automation systems for ventilative cooling of residential buildings.

Building automation systems provide potential to optimise the energy consumption of buildings as well as to detect failures in the operation of buildings. Providing the occupants with control over the indoor environment is widely accepted to positively affect the occupant’s satisfaction. The system building-HVAC-automation-user is becoming more complex. So what does the term ‘perceived control’ really mean? Psychological constructs from social learning theory and personality psychology transferred to the field of personal control of the indoor environment will be discussed.

Simulation techniques have been playing a more and more important role in research and development of reliable and energy efficient building automatic control solutions. Furthermore, simulation is appraised as being viable to judge building automation and control solutions. Therefore, to test and evaluate control strategies, Siemens Building Technologies (SBT) developed a building and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning) plant model library.