A HYBRID ENERGY GENERATION AND MANAGEMENT PLATFORM FOR ENERGY EFFICIENT SMART BUILDINGS

Energy consumption for building-related services accounts for approximately one third of total EU energy consumption. With hybrid off-the-grid energy generation and management systems, significant energy savings can be achieved, thus helping to attain objectives on climate change and security of supply. The engineering and deployment of off-the-grid energy production systems for buildings addressing the renewable energy technologies (e.g. wind, solar, geothermal, fuel cells) and integration of these systems with the ICT-based sub-systems becomes a necessity. Integrated IT tool support for these activities does not exist; available tools are stand-alone products, often tied to specific standards. This lack of appropriate descriptions and tools currently outweighs the benefit of software interoperability. This paper addresses an integrated building concept that operates on energy-efficient basis while capturing retrofit opportunities that scale from a single building to multiple buildings at district level. The proposed concept is developed based on two research areas; (1) Building energy supply-side (micro-grid) management and (2) Building energy demand-side management complementing with the integrated energy production from renewable energy sources, building energy diagnostics and predictive control, ubiquitous wireless sensing technologies, and micro-grid power electronics and power control to exploit the potential for reduction of building energy consumption, thus addressing the deficit of insufficient tool support. To reach this objective, new methods and tools are researched that increase system productivity covering hardware and software design for individual production/consumption sub-systems, system design of component networks and integration into backend systems. The research focuses on an innovative model-driven development approach that integrates systems in building supply-side and building demand-side to balance efficient energy production from off-the-grid systems and optimized consumption. The system integration is based on advanced control algorithms capable of learning from previous operations in real time. The research findings will be demonstrated in an office building in Hannover, Germany integrating different energy efficient production/consumption systems addressing the renewable energy technologies coupled with energy storage systems and building energy management systems comprising scalable and robust sensing network platforms, energy performance monitoring and data warehouse technologies.