Optimal control strategy for HVAC system in building energy management

Heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems have played an important role in building energy and comfort management. It is designed to provide a relatively constant and comfortable temperature in buildings and provide fresh and filtered air with a comfortable humidity level. In this paper, an optimal control strategy is proposed to control the HVAC system for maintaining building's indoor environment with high energy efficiency. The control strategy utilized swarm intelligence to determine the amount of energy dispatched to each equipment in the HVAC system. In order to study the impact of HVAC system operations in the indoor environment, both the building model and HVAC equipment models are developed. A case study is carried out to simulate the real time control process in a specified building environment.