Energy Management Systems and Strategies in Buildings Sector: A Scoping Review

Energy management systems in buildings (EMSs-in-Bs) play key roles in energy saving and management to which an efficient energy management system in buildings (EMS-in-Bs) design contributes. Different scope-based designs of EMS-in-Bs are reviewed. The objective is to highlight different scope-based designs of EMS-in-Bs in which scopes of reviewed papers aim to implement a function of, for example, “monitor energy performance”, “estimate energy-use”, or “control energy-use”. This paper aims to constitute a comprehensive conception of how efficient such an EMS-in-Bs to perform more than one scope (i.e., function). Meaning, is the proposed EMS-in-Bs able to perform several sequential functions? This paper's contribution is to give a function-focused EMS's review utilizing the scope of reviewed papers. That is, reviewed papers are classified based on the scope/function the selected EMS-in-Bs is designed for. This could help select an EMS-in-Bs to perform certain scope/function(s). Another contribution is that, numerous EMSs-in-Bs are reviewed in a classified way so that the most adequate EMS-in-Bs for a certain scenario considering the performed scopes/functions e.g., “monitor” are highlighted. Findings showed that “control-optimize”-functioned EMS-in-Bs achieved highest energy-saving rates ~30% compared to “estimate-predict” with 10%. Findings, insights given by reviewed studies, current problems faced, future directions, and remarks are drawn in conclusion. Analysis done on reviewed papers has found that the highest and lowest averaged-energy saving rates were obtained with papers whose their scopes are implementing “control”-with-“optimize” and “estimate”-with-“predict”, respectively. Energy saving rates for these two classes of scopes have been equal to 22.57% and 10%, respectively. We recommend that there is a need to enhance the estimation- and prediction-related EMS-in-Bs to achieve a higher energy saving rate.