Intelligent Multiagent Control System for Energy and Comfort Management in Smart and Sustainable Buildings

Smart and energy-efficient buildings have recently become a trend for future building industry. The major challenge in the control system design for such a building is to minimize the power consumption without compromising the customers comfort. For this purpose, a hierarchical multiagent control system with an intelligent optimizer is proposed in this study. Four types of agents, which are switch agent, central coordinator-agent, local controller-agent, and load agent, cooperate with each other to achieve the overall control goals. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is utilized to optimize the overall system and enhance the intelligence of the integrated building and microgrid system. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) based platform is designed for customers to input their preferences and monitor the results. Two sets of case studies are carried out and corresponding simulation results are presented in this paper.