Ambient Energy Saving with Predictive Thermal Comfort in Green Building using Smart Blinds

The immense growth in the buildings to accommodate the ever growing population, and needs of the inhabitants, comes at a heavy cost on the environment. The need for thermal comfort, required to ensure high productivity of the inhabitants, is depleting energy resources and contributing to the carbon footprint. Commercial Buildings are equipped with several power hungry HVAC systems for attaining the required thermal comfort. All this has shifted the focus towards sustainable development and need for green buildings. With this vision we propose to leverage the power of smart blinds for attaining a comfortable and sustainable environment. In our approach we predict thermal comfort index to determine the comfort level of inhabitants. The smart blinds are used to regulate the abundant solar energy by automatically altering blinds' tilt and vertical position to attain the required thermal comfort. The thermal model of heat flow in the building is created and used to determine the optimal position of the blinds required to achieve thermal comfort. Intelligent control of smart blind allows to substitute the work executed by HVAC by efficiently regulating the incident solar radiation. Thus smart blinds allow for thermal comfort of inhabitants with reduced energy consumption which minimizes the carbon footprint and drives towards sustainable green buildings.