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Introduction to Intelligent Buildings
T.Nikolaou, D. Kolokotsa, G.Stavrakakis

INTELLIGENT BUILDINGS: THE GLOBAL FRAMEWORK

Sustainability is a term that has become an integral part of our vocabulary. By this word we understand the protection of the ecosystem through protection of its resources. The economic sustainability of buildings can be divided into two parts: the investment, which in the case of buildings and buildings stocks should be considered as long term resource productivity problem, and the running costs. Instead of minimizing the investment cost through low cost highly customized solutions, it is preferable to find for a given investment the solution which has the highest durability and reusability. Solutions which can be repaired and used in several ways have the highest long term potential. On the other hand, solutions with low energy consumption, easy to clean, to operate and easy to maintain have generally low running costs (and a feasibly low environmental impact at the same time). The social and cultural aspects of sustainability include comfort, wellbeing and safety of the building occupants. Human health protection, which is often wrongly associated with protection of the ecosystem, is in fact much more closely related to comfort problems (indoor air quality, etc.). The protection of cultural resources, above all building stocks and historic urban systems, protected biotopes and man-made landscapes gives a common framework for architecture, city planning, regional planning and landscape architecture. Environments which have a high cultural and social quality do not become obsolete. During its life cycle, which can vary from some months to hundreds of years, a building consumes resources from nature, produces large quantities of emissions and affects the ecosystem in many different ways. In addition to the general objective of maximizing the quality of a building, the design process should also aim at minimizing the resource consumption and the emissions due to the construction, operation, maintenance, refurbishment and disposal process. One of the possible actions is to maximize the closed loops, i.e. the reuse or recycling of building elements and materials, heat recovery and the multiple use of water. To reduce the environmental impact means to reduce the mass and energy flows and raise at the same time the overall quality of a building. It does not mean to reduce the comfort level or the indoor quality. The most important factor that threatens the sustainability of the planetary ecosystem as we know it, is the accumulation in the atmosphere of the 'greenhouse gases'. This is causing the planet to warm, and is producing climate changes that may be irreversible. These climate changes are already occurring at a rate, which exceeds the adaptive capacity of some of the earth's bio systems [1]. The most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, and the increase in its concentration is mainly because of the quantities which are being discharged into the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels.

INTRODUCTION TO INTELLIGENT BUILDINGS

The mechanism of the global warming effect is described briefly (see Figure 1.1.). Carbon dioxide produced when fossil fuels are burned, but also methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons, has created what scientists call a greenhouse effect in the atmosphere. While the solar radiation reaches the earth, one third of it is reflected back into space and the remainder is absorbed by the earth and the atmosphere. Some of the long-wave infrared radiation emitted back from the earth is returned to the earth by the greenhouse gases. Like the glass in a greenhouse, greenhouse gases let in the sun's rays, but trap heat radiated back by the earth. This causes warming of the planet. The solar energy absorbed by natural features is balanced by the energy re-radiated from the earth and atmosphere. Without this greenhouse canopy, the earth would be up to 30 C cooler.

Figure 1.1. The Greenhouse Mechanism

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were never rising above 280 parts per million until the recent decades. Today, carbon dioxide levels are 25-28 percent higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution, and still rising. Atmospheric CO2 levels are 365 parts per million, and projected to double in the coming decades. Man-made sources of carbon dioxide (fossil fuel emissions and the clearing of forests) are responsible for this increase. Roughly five billion tons of carbon in the form of CO2 (one ton per human being) is released into the air every year by the burning of oil, gas, and coal. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported a prediction of the global temperature rise due to greenhouse gas emissions. According to IPCC report a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere compared to preindustrial levels would lead to an average global temperature rise of as much as 4.5 C. Predictions regarding the impact of global warming are bound to be fuzzy. Nevertheless, certain outcomes, the most critical being the rise in sea level due to the melting of land based ice and the thermal expansion of sea water are certain. The fossil fuels, namely petroleum, natural gas and coal are the energy sources on which the European energy infrastructure is based. The energy use can be divided into three end use segments: Transportation Residential and commercial buildings Industry Each of these sectors consumes about one-third of the total energy use. More specifically the total final energy consumption in the EU in 1997 was about 930 Mtoe. A simplified

INTRODUCTION TO INTELLIGENT BUILDINGS

breakdown of this demand shows the importance of buildings in this context: 40.7% of total energy demand is used in the residential and tertiary sectors, most of it for buildingrelated energy services. It should also be pointed out that approximately 10% of the consumed energy in buildings comes from renewable energy sources (RES). Space heating is by far the largest energy end-use of households in Member States (57%), followed by water heating (25%). Electrical appliances and lighting make up 11% of the sectors total energy consumption (Figure 1.2.). For the tertiary sector (Figure 1.3) the importance of space heating is somewhat lower (52% of total consumption of the sector), while energy consumption for lighting and "other" (which is mainly office equipment) are 14% and 16%, respectively. On the other hand, there is increasing international concern with climate change, and the targets agreed by the European Union under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in 2010 by 8% compared to 1990 levels represent a real challenge. In the Green Paper three major points emerged concerning the European Union and its energy strategic issues [4]: The European Union will become increasingly dependent on external energy sources; enlargement will not change the situation; based on current forecasts, EU energy dependence will reach 70% in 2030. The European Union has very limited scope to influence energy supply conditions; it is essentially on the demand side that the EU can intervene, mainly by promoting energy saving in buildings and the transport sector. At present, the European Union is not in a position to respond to the challenge of climate change and to meet its commitments, notably under the Kyoto Protocol.

Figure 1.2. Energy consumption by end use in EU residential buildings

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Figure 1.3. Energy consumption by end use in EU tertiary buildings

Energy use in commercial buildings represents a direct cost to business, while the thermal comfort, visual comfort and indoor air quality of the indoor environment have a substantial bearing on occupants productivity [5]. It is more than obvious that improved energy efficiency and reduction of energy cost can have beneficial impacts on the competitiveness, the environment, the health and the well being of European citizens. The benefits of installing BEMS are therefore direct and indirect as well as microeconomic and macro-economic. Apart from the obvious environmental benefits, other improvements also occur as a result of BEMS installations. Fire control is an obvious example and it is expected that the total integration concept will become popular. This implies a single central host computer serving the fire alarm system as well as the other building systems. The fire alarm control panels and the Application Specific Controllers (ASCs) communicate with the Operator Workstations (OWSs) over separate communication buses. A merit here is that, if a fire occurs on one floor of a multi-storey building, the HVAC units can be used to prevent the smoke from spreading by opening exhaust dampers and closing outdoor air intake dampers of the fire floor. The integration of security and access control and other building services systems into a BEMS can also provide both economic and operational benefits. First, initial installation work, such as electric wiring can be consolidated, resulting in cost savings. Substantial paybacks can be generated through HVAC energy management and lighting programs, thereby offsetting some of the costs involved in the integration process. Secondly, the cost of on-site guard services can be greatly reduced. The BEMS can also be a tool to assist facility management and operating personnel of a building. The computerised maintenance management programs provide facility management personnel with tools needed to protect equipment, control costs, schedule workloads, review historical trends, manage materials and plan budgets. Maintenance scheduling includes work order printout, maintenance history, material inventory, financial analysis and management information, etc. The utilities metering program provides the means to dynamically monitor and record a facility's energy consumption on a real-time basis while a tenant energy monitoring program is also available. The heating/cooling plant efficiency program can continuously monitor the efficiency of the central HVAC plants because a small decrease in operating efficiency of these large central systems can result in a significant increase in energy consumption and its associated costs.

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OVERVIEW OF INTELLIGENT BUILDINGS Definition of Intelligent Buildings

The recent energy crises, the realization that energy resources are not inexhaustible and the general trend towards a cleaner environment have led to the development of many practices that aim at using energy as "optimally" as possible. In the building sector this has materialised in the form of "Building Energy Management Systems" (BEMS). Broadly speaking, BEMS refers to a computerised system that attempts to "control" all the energy consuming operations in a building. These may include heating and ventilation, lighting, indoor climate and others. Depending on the level of sophistication these operations may be controlled independently or not. In this way it is expected that the subtle interrelations between the various parameters are taken into account, resulting in "optimum" operation. Nowadays, the term "smart" or "intelligent building" is gaining popularity and this concept generated a good deal of market anticipation during the last decade, much of which subsequently dissipated once the limits and complexities of building intelligence were discovered. Though intelligence is an ambiguous term, especially when applied to man-made systems, it is widely accepted that it refers to objects that can react correctly to unforeseen circumstances by choosing amongst a set of possible actions and furthermore, can learn from the associated response. The concepts of self-correction or fault tolerance are considered as essential elements of "artificial intelligence". It is also widely accepted that the means to achieve intelligence consist of tools that resemble human intelligence methods, such as neural networks and fuzzy logic. Intelligent Building technology generally refers to the integration of four systems: a Building Automation System (BAS), a Telecommunications System (TS), an Office Automation System (OAS) and a Computer Aided Facility Management System (CAFMS). A sophisticated BAS is actually the basis of every "intelligent building". BEMS originated in the USA in the early 1970s. They initially consisted of dumb outstations, which collected data and fed them to a central station. The central station was the only part of the system with some intelligence. BEMS from the early 1980s are now considered cumbersome compared with today's systems. The next development was the introduction of the intelligent outstation, which resulted from the development of the low-cost PC. A typical centralized commercial BEMS consists of the central station and a number of outstations. The outstation accepts inputs from sensors monitoring the values of variables, such as flow and return temperatures of a heating system. Then the inputs are processed and the outstation sends output signals to control items of a plant, i.e. actuators or a valve. The outstation contains a small circuit board, the communication board, which allows it to interface with the central station usually Local Area Network (LAN), sub-LANS or a modem. The central station is where most of the long-term data storage takes place.

Historical Overview
There was a general expansion in the construction industry after World War II. A desire to improve comfort inside new, larger buildings resulted in more complex mechanical systems. The impact of this was the development of better heating and cooling control systems. The large size of buildings was one of the major forces behind the concept of centralization.

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Pneumatic controls and electrical switches were mounted everywhere while excessive numbers of panels were installed near equipment controlled areas. The involvement of human operators to monitor the status of systems and log readings was necessary. In the 50's, the introduction of the pneumatic sensor-transmitter permitting local indication and remote signal plus the receiver-controller with optional remote adjustment were the major reasons that led to pneumatic centralization. The number of local control panels was thus highly reduced to a more-or-less single center which was located in a control room. Another trend, miniaturization, resulted in the reduction of the physical size of instruments. The use of electronic sensors and analogue control loops by the end of this decade resulted in a hardwired centralized control centre. In the 60's, the introduction of control companies for commercial buildings helped the development of new technologies. Electromechanical multiplexing systems were introduced, resulting in reduction in installation costs and maintenance. Wires were reduced from hundreds to a few dozen wires per multiplexer. The control center panel was transformed into a control center console. Commercial digital indication and logging systems were available on the control center console to permit the automatic recording of selected parameters during unusual conditions and to provide information of those selected parameters. Automatic control of systems, like air-handling units (AHUs), became possible. Temperature, flow, pressure and other equipment parameters were monitored on the console. Intercom systems and phones were also a part of the console. The first computerized building automation control center was marketed late in the 60's and data communication was done by means of coaxial cables or twisted pairs. The new use of mini-computers or central processing units (CPUs) and programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in building automation systems increased dramatically due to the oil embargo of 1973. A new term, energy management system (EMS), was derived and became a standard in the control manufacturers' sales brochures. New application software packages were incorporated into their basic automation systems. Some packages such as duty cycle demand control, optimum start/stop, optimum temperature, day/night control, and enthalpy control were introduced. Additionally, fire and security systems were emerging from building automation systems. The building owner could directly be in contact with the systems by keeping track of energy usage and cost. This new tool helped management to make better predictions and compare relative costs of products. By the mid 70's, the cost of hardware began to decrease. Systems became "user-friendly" and it was possible to program and generate a new data base on the same system. Printers with keyboards (KBs) and cathode ray tubes (CRTs) with KBs were the primary man-machine interface with the CPUs. "Dumb" multiplexers were becoming "smart". The small microprocessor embedded inside some multiplexers could "standalone", providing analogue alarm detection which reduced communication transactions. Field interface devices (FIDs) appeared and were the remote processing units compatible with the CPUs. In the 80's, the introduction of personal computers (PCs) revolutionized the control industry. The lower cost of chips was the principal cause of the development of new technology in building automation and energy management. The resultant rapid change motivated manufacturers to engage in research and development rather than investing in their existing hardware and software. The production of individual microprocessor based distributed direct digital control (DDDC) was accepted by the users because of the large use of PCs in the engineering work areas and in universities. The DDDC systems were replacing the conventional pneumatic control systems. The building operator console (BOC) became the major man-machine interface and all programming was done through high level languages such as Pascal or C. The BOC was directly linked to remote local

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microprocessor control panels (LMCPs) using proprietary local area network (LAN) protocols. The provision of interoperability and expandability, i.e. linking together monitoring and control systems such as fire detection, HVAC control, etc. via a common data highway, was not possible, as with the lack of standards and due to competitive pressures, each manufacturer had developed their unique proprietary communications protocol. The result for building owners has been great difficulty integrating products made by different manufacturers. Stand-alone energy management systems, lighting control systems and fire detection and suppression systems are now common, but integration of these systems is rare. Even with a single building automation function, e.g. HVAC control there has been a difficulty. If there is a need to expand or upgrade the control system, a building owner has been forced to either return to the same vendor who installed the existing system, replace it in its entirety, or install a separate independent system because the communication protocols for other products are incompatible [1]. This led to the integration of systems using interfaces referred to as gateways. With a gateway relevant data can be passed from the fire system to the building energy management system which controls lights and fans. For a gateway project to work successfully the manufacturers of the systems involved were forced to release details of their protocols. The agreement to a common protocol resolved these problems. In the past decade attempts have been made throughout the world to establish a standard communication protocol. Progress is slow bearing in mind the many different candidates for standards: Profibus, Batibus, EIBus, Echelon, BACnet. The capabilities of each communication protocol specialized in building automation is depicted in the following Table. The blank boxes indicate that no information is available for the specific characteristic. As far as BEMS and Energy Management and Control systems architecture is concerned, the centralized architecture will continue to play a significant role [2]. Figure 1.4 illustrates a PC-hosted control system currently available in the market.

Figure 1.4 PC-hosted centralized architecture

Moreover a centralized PLC based control architecture is also widely employed. From a technical perspective, centralized control architectures serve with advantage in application systems where time critical closely coupled synchronization and high data flows are required. When devices and systems are loosely coupled and the synchronization is less time-critical, the advantages in adopting distributed control architecture are likely to become apparent. Figure 1.5 illustrates the distributed architecture versus the centralized one.

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Figure 1.5. Centralized and Distribute architecture

Being physically distributed is perhaps the major feature of such systems, with key advantage derived from simplified wiring, related cost savings and improved maintenance. The distribution of intelligence is in fact very limited as the lack of design tools still prevails. The design paradigms of a distributed control system should be simple and not over sophisticated. This leads to the adoption of the components-based approach [3]. The term 'components' as a design concept is relatively familiar to the software industry as a deviation from object-oriented design. Components in a distributed architecture are the 'smart' sensors and actuators and controllers that aim to transform the simple on/off operation of micro-switches to a more sophisticated operation e.g. counting, time delay, response, etc [4]. Existing buildings and their retrofitting provide a large potential for the incorporation of energy efficient measures into buildings. In many European countries there is considerably higher activity in refurbishment and reuse of buildings as opposed to the construction of new ones. BEMS can contribute to a significant reduction of the energy consumption of buildings and improvement of the indoor air quality. Modern control systems provide an optimised operation of the energy systems while satisfying indoor comfort. Recent technological developments based on artificial intelligence techniques offer several advantages compared with the classical control systems. Hence the current research on energy management systems, which concerns mainly software development, is focusing on state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technologies (neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms, etc.).

State of the art in Intelligent Buildings

The development of automatic control systems has resulted in Intelligent Buildings with a wide range of building automation facilities. In many installations BEMS have replaced so-called hardwired controls, with control strategies implemented in software. The energy efficiency of buildings combines many technologies: Passive heating and cooling through the building envelope. Efficient daylight penetration using suitable shading devices. Efficient appliances that reduce the electricity consumption and cost. Increased thermal insulation. High efficiency windows (low-E coatings, etc.). Natural ventilation for indoor air quality and passive cooling (e.g. cross ventilation, stack effect ventilation, etc.) Improvements in building services Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) technologies.

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Building Energy Management and Control. The Metasys of Johnson Controls is used as an example to illustrate the basic structure, both in terms of hardware configuration and software features, of a modern BEMS. Hardware The basic architecture consists of multiple programmable control panels, called network control units (NCUs) and operator workstations (OWSs) that communicate with each other over a high speed communication network, called the N1 local area network (LAN). The OWS is normally a standard personal computer. Each NCU manages an area of the building facility, such as a mechanical equipment room. NCU capacity can be increased with remote panels called network expansion units (NEUs). The NCUs and NEUs directly control central plant equipment, while the management of smaller air handlers, heat pumps, lighting circuits and other building services systems is delegated to a family of application specific controllers (ASCs). The ASCs and NEUs communicate with the NCUs over a secondary communication network, called the N2 bus. The architecture is unique in the way that the control functions are mainly distributed but yet remain tightly coupled. ASCs and NCUs provide standalone control capability for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC), fire management, access control and lighting wherever it is needed, providing maximum fault tolerance and reliability. When these controllers are interconnected in the NI LAN and N2 bus, all parts of the facility's operation are co-ordinated with each other so that the building operators can have complete and consistent information about the facility from all input-output devices. The NI LAN is the communications backbone for the whole BAS and it allows the functions of multiple NCUs and OWSs to be integrated into a facility-wide control and information network. Original designs using ARCNET had a communication rate of 2.5 mega-baud over a combination of media, including coaxial cable, twisted pair or fiber optics. Now, the rate can be much higher and the bandwidth much wider. The N2 bus connects point interfaces and remote controllers within an equipment room, or within occupied spaces of the facility to NCUs and usually uses Opto-22 Optomux, the de-facto industry standard for many industrial automation and control applications. The NCU is the heart of the network and it has total access to all information from every control device anywhere on the network, allowing it to perform control tasks with efficiency and intelligence. NCUs can work alone and thus the OWSs become the man-machine interface. There are various operational standalone ASCs, such as air handling unit (AHU) controller, intelligent lighting controller (ILC), variable air volume box (VAV) controller, unitary equipment (UNT) controller, intelligent access controller (IAC) and intelligent fire controller (IFC) etc. HVAC can consume up to more than half of the total energy of a building and thus, the AHU, VAV and UNT controllers are so important. The controller's software allows it to maximize the control of heating, cooling, economizer, preheat, humidification, de-humidification, static pressure, electric or hot-water reheat and fan assist, etc. Lighting is the second largest consumer of electrical energy. ILCs provide flexible zone control and after-hours override capability. The network terminals (NTs) provide convenient interface to NCUs because of their portability. Instead of using a keyboard, the NTs display menus on a liquid crystal display. It can also be permanently mounted within the NCU enclosure. All parameters used for gaining access to a NT are exactly identical to that of the OWS. This commonality between the NT and OWS represents the totally integrated design concept.

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Software Direct digital control (DDC) is the major concept of todays BAS. DDC control loops for damper operation are available to provide ventilation requirements or to utilize outdoor air for cooling. For ventilation control, there are mainly three schemes, namely fixed quantity of outdoor air, mixed air control and economizer control of mixer air. For heating control seven schemes are available such as constant temperature hot water control, hot water reset control, discharge air control, discharge air reset control and space temperature control, etc. For cooling / heating / humidification / dehumidification control five schemes are available, namely chilled water control, dehumidification control, humidification control, heating-cooling sequencing and humidification-dehumidification sequencing. Static pressure control and VAV system terminal box control are also quite popular. Building energy management features are available inside a modern BAS. The duty cycle program reduces electrical energy consumed by the fan by cycling it on and off. The power demand limiting program monitors electrical consumption during each and every demand interval and sheds assigned loads as required to reduce demand. The unoccupied period program, or night cycle program, is primarily a heating season function and it can maintain a high space temperature limit during the cooling season, if desired. The optimum start-stop program is an adaptive energy-saving program that uses intelligence and the flywheel effect (energy retention capacity) of a building to save a considerable amount of energy beyond that which can be saved with the program clock. The unoccupied night purge program can be applied to most HVAC systems that are capable of using l00% outdoor air when the temperature of outdoor air drops considerably at night. The enthalpy program monitors the temperature and relative humidity or dew point of the outdoor and return air and then positions the outdoor air and return air dampers to use the air source with the lowest total heat or least enthalpy. The load reset program controls heating and/or cooling to maintain comfort conditions in the building while consuming a minimum amount of energy. The zero-energy band program saves energy by avoiding simultaneous heating and cooling of air delivered to spaces. Lighting, as mentioned above, consumes quite a large amount of energy. The occupiedunoccupied lighting control is a time-based program that schedules the on/off time of lights for a building or zone to coincide with the occupancy schedules. Another way to reduce the costs associated with lighting is to control the level of lighting in a building or building zone. Lighting level control is accomplished by two different methods: multilevel lighting and modulated lighting. For this case, control ballasts are specifically designed for such control schemes.

BUILDING FACILITIES HVAC

Energy conserving operations in buildings require control systems for Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC). HVAC system controls are the information link between varying energy demands of a building's primary and secondary systems and the (usually) approximately uniform demands for indoor environmental conditions. Without a properly functioning control system, the most expensive, most thoroughly designed HVAC system will be a failure. It simply will not control indoor conditions to provide comfort. The HVAC control system should be designed in order:

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To be able to sustain a comfortable building interior environment. To maintain acceptable indoor air quality. To be as simple and inexpensive as possible and yet to meet HVAC system operation criteria reliably for the system lifetime. To result in efficient HVAC system operation under all conditions. A considerable challenge is presented to the HVAC system designer to design a control system that is both energy conserving and reliable. One of the reasons for inadequate control operation historically is inadequate design or unclear assignment of responsibility for control system design. In order to achieve proper control based on the control system design, the HVAC system itself must be constructed and calibrated according to the mechanical system drawings. These must include properly sized primary and secondary systems. In addition, air stratification must be avoided, proper provision for control sensors is required, freeze protection is necessary in cold climates, and proper attention must be paid to minimizing energy consumption subject to reliable operation and occupant comfort. The principal, ultimate controlled variable in buildings is zone temperature (and to a lesser extent air quality in some buildings). Control of zone temperature involves many other types of control within the primary and secondary HVAC systems, including boiler and chiller control, pump and fan control, liquid and air flow control, humidity control, and auxiliary system control (for example thermal storage control). In this instance control refers only to automatic control of these subsystems. Honeywell (1988) defines an automatic control system as "a system that reacts to a change or imbalance in the variable it controls by adjusting other variables to restore the system to the desired balance." In the following figures a simple system that heats air in a duct through a steam coil is used. Figures 1.6 and 1.7 depict the physical and control system diagrams, showing their associations. This typical system includes a temperature sensor, a controller that compares the sensed temperature to the set point, a steam valve (actuator) controlled by the controller, and the coil itself.

Figure 1.6. Simple heating coil control system showing the process (coil and short duct length), the
controller, the controlled device (valve and its actuator) and the sensor. The set point entered externally is the desired coil outlet temperature.

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Figure 1.7: Equivalent control diagram for heating coil. The G's represent functions relating the input

to the output of each module. Voltages V represent both temperatures (set point and coil outlet) and the controller output to the valve in electronic control systems The four common modes of relating the error (difference between desired set point and sensed value of controlled variable) to the corrective action to be taken by the controller are: Two-position Proportional Integral Derivative The latter three are usually used in a variety of combinations with one another. Two-position control applies to an actuator that is either fully open or fully closed. This type of control is the least expensive method of automatic control and is suitable for control of HVAC systems with large time constants. Examples include residential space and water heating systems. Systems that are fast reacting should not be controlled using this approach, since overshoot and undershoot may be excessive. Proportional control corrects the controlled variable in proportion to the difference between the controlled variable and the set point. It is used with stable, slow systems that permit the use of a narrow throttling range (the total change in the controlled variable that is required to cause the actuator or controlled device to move between its limits) and resulting small offset (difference between desired and achieved value). Fast-acting systems need wide throttling ranges in order to avoid instability and large offsets. Integral control is often added to proportional control to eliminate the offset inherent in proportional only control. PI control is used for fast-acting systems for which accurate control is needed. Examples include mixed air controls, duct static pressure controls and coil controls. Derivative control is used to speed up the action of PI control. The resulting control action is known by the term PID control. If HVAC systems do not require rapid control response, the use of PID control is not recommended, since the incorporation of the error derivative makes it susceptible to noise in the measurements. One application in buildings where PID control is especially effective is in duct static pressure control, a fast-acting subsystem that has a tendency to be unstable otherwise.

Intelligent Lighting Controls

One of the most significant developments within the technology of intelligent microprocessor based controls is the use of intelligent lighting controls. These controls

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provide greater flexibility, leading to better management of light. They make it possible to create an aesthetically pleasing environment, while at the same time saving energy. The concept behind these controls is to operate lighting automatically according to the function of an area, the time of day, ambient light levels, or occupancy. The single most important aspect is programmability, that is, the ability to remember lighting levels as a series of settings. These settings, also known as scenes, can be recalled automatically by the dimmer system or by the central building control system. Lighting controls can be either stand alone, room dependant types, or larger networked systems, where the dimmer units are fitted in an electrical cupboard and operated by a network of external devices like sensors and control panels. The networked systems have the advantage of allowing control of different rooms or areas from many points. In a domestic setting this could be a wall mounted switch panel near the main entrance that acts as a master to several rooms. Network systems also have standard serial ports, which makes integrating to central controllers much easier. These interfaces are usually bi-directional, so a central controller can request a level change and then confirm the action. The information from the lighting system can also be used for determining energy consumption or for mimicking occupancy patterns while the house is unoccupied. Standalone dimmers can be interfaced too, via infra-red remote control though this only provides for one way operation without the ability of determining if a request has taken place. Intelligent lighting controls have many advantages over manual ones, including convenience, creating ambience, increased design flexibility, energy savings, reduced lamp replacement costs and security. Scenes, once set up, can be easily recalled manually from wall mounted switch panels or by remote control. They can be recalled automatically by timer, by daylight sensor or according to occupancy. Once a new scene is selected the lighting will fade to the new set of levels at a pre-determined rate. When dimming a lamp the energy saved is as high as 98% of the proportion of unused energy. Because the human eye perceives light non-linearly, it is possible to reduce light levels by over 10% before the reduction in brightness is noticed. This would lead to a near 10% saving in energy consumption. A 50% reduction in dimming levels would save around 40% of the energy. Intelligent dimmers ramp or fade a lamp to a preset level. This is particularly important when the lamp is first turned on. Incandescent lamps tend to fail at this point due to thermal shock of the cold filament. By fading the lamp to the set level, also know as "soft start", a lamp's life is extended considerably. At 10% dimming a lamp will last twice as long and at 50% dimming it will last 20 times as long. Voltage stabilisation, available on more expensive systems, protects lamps against spikes and peaks in mains voltage. In warm climates and in the summer months when air-conditioning is used, lowering the thermal load of the lighting can also save energy. Solid state dimmers, unlike their rheostat predecessors, do not dim lighting by loosing the excess energy in the form of heat through a resistive load. Instead they switch the load on and off 100 times a second with a time delay proportional to the amount being dimmed. Not all lamps are dimmable, some like compact fluorescent lamps, can only be switched on or off. However, energy can still be saved if they are turned off automatically when not required. For example, during a bright day the lamps near a window can be turned off where normally they would be left on. A sensor that measures daylight provides an input value to the controller that will measure the value over time and use that information to switch or dim circuits to predetermined levels. Energy savings can be derived through occupancy detection. Sensors are mounted in rooms, which detect if there is movement within the room or area. They feed that

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information back to the controller, which counts a period of time that no movement has been detected for. Each time movement is detected the count will be reset. Once movement has not been detected for a preset period of time the lighting in that room or area can be either switched off or turned down to a low energy saving level. After a further period of no movement they can be turned off altogether. Lighting can play an important part in security, deterring intruders whether the property is occupied or not. Low levels of illumination can be programmed to operate at night in certain rooms or hallways. When the building is unoccupied, levels can be selected that copy normal usage. This can be by time clock or by selecting a vacation mode. Dimmed or selectively switched levels of illumination will save energy and is more effective than leaving lighting on or using simple plug in timers. The principle of lighting controls is to either dim or switch the lighting according to requirements. Mains power comprises of an alternating current that flows in one direction and then in the other along the cable at the rate of 50 or 60 cycles per second, measured as frequency in Hertz. The value 50 or 60Hz is dependent on the power system of the country. If we were to look at this waveform it would appear as a stretched S shape on its side. Draw a line through the middle and this is what is called the zero crossing point. Dimming is achieved by turning a solid state switch or triac off and then on again a period of time after this point has elapsed. The longer this time, the less energy will pass through the triac and into the lamp and the more it will be dimmed. This turning on and off of the triac occurs every time the mains crossing point is reached (half phase), 100 times per second. Some controllers use a microprocessor control with the above timing function being handled by an analogue circuit. More sophisticated systems, called digital dimmers, operate the switching direct from the microprocessor. This has the advantage of greater reliability, quieter operation, lower cost and smaller controls.

Intelligent Control of Building Components

In Intelligent Building design, the building faade constitutes the boundary, as opposed to the barrier, between the indoor and external environments. The building skin is therefore a moderator of flows, adjusting gains and losses to and from the interior either inherently, through static elements such as building mass, or cohesively through automatic response or control. Some of the elements which have to regulated by the building envelope are water, humidity, air, sound, light, view, heat, fire, pollution, safety and security. When implementing any specific control strategy, account must also be taken of the conflicts which arise between these parameters. There are therefore many interpretations of what constitutes an intelligent faade, ranging from a simple design solution which is appropriate to the proposed of expected building use, or a system with the potential for adaptability to a range of uses. The design solution adopted will depend on the building remit and its environment and as such, as the boundaries between building shell, services and systems become blurred, will constitute part of the overall architectural concept. The balancing of the flows at the boundary, in particular in response to daily or seasonal variations, often results in the necessity for automatic control. For instance, daylight is desirable but glare is not; solar gains are useful in winter but not in summer; natural ventilation may be preferable but noise and airborne pollutants may be a problem; a good view is desirable but safety and security must be maintained. Since a static design solution cannot redress these conflicts, adaptability of the faade becomes a necessity.

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From an energy point of view the intelligent faade needs to address the problem of controlling shading for minimization of solar gains in summer and maximization in winter. External shading devices can be adjusted by control systems and furthermore have the facility for user override. Such shading devices can also have incorporated photovoltaic panels for integration of renewable energy sources. Solar gains may also be controlled by advanced glazing materials which can respond to sunlight or changes in temperature or the properties of which can be controlled by application of a low voltage. In a similar manner, stack ventilation, supply air preheating and background heating can form an integral part of the design process of double skinned buildings. In these systems openings and shading can be adjusted in response to environmental parameters, taking into account temperature, humidity, and solar radiation. Since Intelligent Building design seeks to maximize the benefit to occupants through combined regulation of the above parameters, control algorithms have to be utilized to reach optimum performance. Off the shelf control algorithms exist for the standardized control of single or multiple parameters, whilst customized algorithms can be readily integrated into control systems for more complex design solutions, and although faade engineering is still a developing market, the number of buildings adopting integrated shell solutions continues to become more commonplace.

Network Services
The fully integrated building, in which all of the electronic systems serving the user and the building itself are combined, has yet to become a practical reality. One of the main reasons for this is the valid concern that non-critical systems, such as user IT, and critical systems, such as fire and safety, should not be integrated in one system. Another, less admirable reason, has been the unwillingness of the building control industry to adopt open systems approaches, preferring protectionist activities such as propriety standards. These issues have been addressed by the user IT sector as a whole, where common data transmission protocols and market de facto standards have resulted in extensive market penetration. Similar wide scale adoption of integrated systems can be expected in the building control market if the remaining market barriers can be overcome. Benefits and savings can be expected from the integration of building control and user: IT systems through use of appropriate network services. The benefits can be used as arguments to determine the case for the computer integrated building: Reduced internal alteration costs for reconfiguring lighting and indoor environmental control. Simpler connection interfaces with standardized components and software assisting installers in new build and refurbishment projects. Improved access to consumption and running costs through more effective data collection, availability and presentation for facilities managers. At the end of the millennium available data showed that full integration of network services appears to add to about 60% to the cost of standard building controls. These costs in turn represent about 5% of the cost of the finished building, implying that full integration can add around 3% to the overall cost. However, these figures are dynamic and represent a snapshot in a rapidly changing market. Technology and demands are changing all the time and the energy market remains as volatile as ever. The cost of technologies, in particular of RF control which will effectively bypass the obstacle of wiring, is expected to fall drastically. Adaptability to use and services is therefore the key

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to the intelligent building and the cost of integrated services may soon become similar to the cost of the building services and structure itself, i.e. an integral part of the budget which has to be accounted for.

RECEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

BEMS can contribute to a significant reduction of the energy consumption of buildings and improved indoor comfort. Modern control systems provide an optimised operation of the energy systems while satisfying indoor comfort. Recent technological developments based on artificial intelligence techniques offer several advantages compared with classical control systems. The incorporation of these techniques in applicable systems represents a major challenge for the future of SMART technologies in buildings.

Software
Current research in the field of software developments focuses on the application of artificial intelligence techniques for robust, adaptive control of buildings and their energy consuming systems using fuzzy logic, neural networks and generic algorithms. Research and development of new control strategies using fuzzy logic techniques for building services concerns three basic aspects of building control: (i) Automatic control of individual zones through thermostatic control (fan coil, zone damper, etc.) (ii) Automatic control of boiler plant and central HVAC systems (water temperature, coil temperature, fresh air mixing ration, etc) (iii) Global control of thermal comfort (PMV), visual comfort (Daylight Glare Index) and indoor air quality (CO2), including integration of building component control and utilisation of renewable energy sources (passive solar, natural ventilation, etc.). In addition to fuzzy applications, the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) in various applications related to energy management has been growing significantly over the years [21]. Current applications are related to energy demand forecasting and to HVAC systems of buildings [22, 23, 24, 25]. The results have revealed the potential usefulness of the neural networks for the energy management of houses and buildings. Neural networks provide a black box approach to complex modelling systems and they are particularly applicable where high level of non-linearity exists, the most promising areas for application of neural networks in BEMS are proposed by N.I. Barnard [20]. Those are: condition monitoring, predictive control, building thermal response, consumption checking and off-line optimisation of plant operation. Genetic algorithms have been proposed [46] for automatic tuning of proportional, integral and derivative (PID) controllers in HVAC systems to achieve optimal performance. These algorithms are employed since they have been proved to be robust and efficient in finding near-optimal solutions in complex problem spaces. Simulation results show that the genetic algorithm-based optimisation procedures as implemented in this research study are useful for automatic tuning of PID controllers for HVAC systems, yielding minimum overshoot and minimum settling time. A control strategy using a system approach based on predicting the responses of overall system environment and energy performance to the changes of the control settings of VAV (Variable Air Volume) air conditioning systems [26] has been developed.

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Incremental dynamical models with self-tuning of the VAV system have been proposed. Genetic algorithms are introduced to solve the on-line optimisation problem using a cost function with parameters: (i) the cost concerning the thermal comfort; (ii) the cost concerning the indoor air quality; (iii) the cost concerning the maximum allowed relative humidity, as too high relative humidity is harmful for the occupants; (iv) the cost concerning the total ventilation rate; (v) the cost concerning the energy use. Minimisation of the cost function results to an optimal control for the overall VAV system. The vast majority of these research topics remain at the developmental or experimental phase, where building simulations and in-situ experiments in actual buildings, demonstrate the generally robust nature of these control algorithms together with promising results for energy conservation and improved indoor environmental conditions. Experiments performed in occupied office buildings have demonstrated that such systems can lead to a reduction in energy consumption of 25% compared to conventional control.

Hardware
In recent years, many applied research projects have been developed and completed concerning hardware applications. These projects demonstrate the current developments with regards to the future technologies which will be included in the buildings of tomorrow: Energy Barometer Energy Barometer is a project that has been developed to measure energy use in relation to internal and external climate in many different types of single-family houses. Radio-Teleswitch The Radio-Teleswitch System (RTS) is a system that has been developed for remote control of storage heating and hot water systems, using radio frequency 198 kHz. Weathercall Weathercall (WC) is used for automatic storage heater charge control and domestic hot water storage. Celect Celect is an extension of RTS and WC systems that gives more sophisticated local control of heating systems. Cenesys In Genesys project the aim was to develop optimum control strategies for HVAC systems, based on multictriteria analysis, by the use of fuzzy (rule-based) controllers and to develop and compare of smart tuning techniques for these controllers. Scrats In Smart Controls and Thermal Comfort project, a wide-ranging thermal comfort surveys was carried out in different climatic regions of Europe and resulted to the development of algorithms for use in control systems for air conditioned and natural ventilated buildings in order to reduce energy use. Builtech The Builtech project has been developed to test and document an integrated building energy management system combining intelligent decision making systems (DMS), and smart card techniques and based on recent local operating network (LON), technology which is suitable for existing buildings equipped with

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conventional energy facilities, as well as for new buildings without construction modifications. TeleSurve The TeleSurve project was a European Commission sponsored program to develop the Virtual Services Enterprise: an enterprise that allows teleworkers and business partners to collaborate on a contract-by-contract basis through EDI or over the Internet. The project modelled business processes and then developed them as workflow steps. At that stage the architecture was reviewed to determine what is required to make security an integral part of workflow processing and web-based developments. Proflex Proflex is a project dealing with the support of highly flexible processes, which are subject to frequent changes. The area touches the domains of project management systems, workflow and groupware systems and is part or the newly emerging work management systems. Proflex has been developed on top of Microsoft's groupware solution and has been successfully introduces in three pilot sites in industrial production environments. W3C-LA W3C-LA is a leveraging action funded by ESPRIT to ensure a greater uptake of Web technologies throughout Europe by developing shrink-wrapped demonstrators, disseminating them throughout Europe, and encouraging champions in companies to develop demonstrations for their management that show the potential impact of the Web on the company's future business. The belief is that such demonstrations will lead to applications development within companies. W3C-LA is about opening European industry's eyes to the opportunities that the Web and W3C's new developments offer them.

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