The Design and Implementation of a Smart Building Control System

A significant proportion of total worldwide energy is consumed by buildings. For example, buildings in the US account for about 40 percent of total energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission. Making buildings more energy-efficient is an important step to reduce our energy consumption and carbon emission in the combat with global climate change. Broad participation by consumers, business owners, and governments is required to continuously improve on energy efficiency for new and existing buildings and to achieve the global greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives. This paper provides a software system perspective of improving energy efficiency for buildings. It proposes an architecture that allows for phased investments in technologies to capture the returns from energy savings in various use cases. In addition, it addresses the needs and objectives of different stakeholders, including owners, operators, users, and utility providers. A proof-of-concept implementation of the architecture is used to demonstrate the support for building-wide energy conservation policies using real-time energy pricing and individual occupants’ locations and preferences. It shows that the proposed architecture enables fine-grained building control and reduces energy consumption while maximizing its occupants’ comfort.