Building energy management decision-making in the real world: A comparative study of HVAC cooling strategies

In recent years, various heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) control strategies have been proposed to reduce buildings’ energy consumption environmental impacts. Due different research designs, it is impossible directly compare the reported performance of these determine best approach for operating real-world buildings. To fill this gap, uses a well-validated building simulation model holistically evaluate 12 existing HVAC cooling in reducing total use, peak demand, cost. The findings include: i) ON/OFF night setup could lead even higher cost than 24/7 operation baseline; ii) demand-limiting methods performed well across three metrics achieved highest reduction ratios ranging from 9.8% 10.5%; iii) precooling extended reduced load most significantly by 15.4% 21.4%, respectively; iv) resistive-capacitive (RC) network-based optimization resulted electricity savings with 16.6% 12.9%, based on two common price schedules. Besides providing valuable insights community, study offers practical method help operators analyze select their management goals.