Despite the current emphasis on developing green buildings, the global energy consumption issue is not being adequately addressed. In this project, we propose a new perspective on this ever-threatening issue: NetZero energy building clusters.
The objective of this research is an injection of new modeling techniques into the area of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs). The approach is to design new architectures for domainspecific modeling tools in order to permit feedback from analysis, validation, and verification engines to influence how CPSs are designed. This project outlines new research into the integration of existing, heterogeneous modeling languages in order to address problems in CPS design, rather than a single language used to design any CPS.
Despite their importance within the energy sector, buildings have not kept pace with technological improvements and particularly the evolution of intelligent features. A primary obstacle in enabling intelligent buildings is their highly distributed and diverse nature.
Large scale applications of cyber physical systems (CPS) such as commercial buildings with Building Automation System (BAS)-based demand response (DR) can play a key role in alleviating demand peaks and associated grid stress, increased electricity unit cost, and carbon emissions. However, benefits of BAS alone are often limited because their demand peak reduction cannot be maintained long enough without unduly affecting occupant comfort.
Electricity usage of buildings (including offices, malls and residential apartments) represents a significant portion of a nation's energy expenditure and carbon footprint. Buildings are estimated to consume 72% of the total electricity production in the US. Unfortunately, however, 30% of this energy consumption is wasted. Virtual energy assessment is an approach that can optimize building energy efficiency and minimize waste at a low cost with minimal expert intervention.
