Energy-Efficient Building Ventilation Control Using the Finite Element Modeling of SRC

Significant amounts of energy can be saved every year by appropriate building opening ventilation control. Towards this direction, SRC (System of Resistances and Capacitances), a finite element based hydro-thermal building simulation program can be used in order to define the operation schedules of building openings, which achieve energy savings, while preserving thermal comfort in building interiors. SRCmodels buildings as a collection of thermal circuit elements, which when assembled together form a global system. This systemic point of view, allows real time simulations to be performed, temperatures at the building zones to be calculated and thermal effects of the openings' ventilation to be estimated at every simulation time step. These zone temperature calculations and thermal effect estimations are repeated in an iterative algorithm in order to derive the opening operation schedules which comply with imposed energy and comfort constrains. Essentially the operation schedules of the openings are obtained by defining and solving a convex optimization problem at every iteration step. At the end of the iteration process, the schedules which satisfy the energy and comfort criteria, are finally selected. The examined method is tested ona simple one-zone model building. Extensions to multiple zonebuildings of higher complexity are straightforward.