Program Overview
13:20 Opening Remark (Qing-Shan Jia)
13:25 Peter Luh “Exergy-based operation optimization of a distributed energy system through the energy-supply chain”
14:00 Karl Johansson “Occupancy estimation for smart buildings”
14:35 Qianchuan Zhao “Building System Control Research in Tsinghua University-Some Recent Progresses”
15:10 Coffee Break
15:30 Pushkar Apt “Smart Building Testbeds in SinBerBest”
16:05 Qing-Shan Jia “Building Cyber Physical Systems – from Energy Saving to Fast Evacuation”
16:40 Damiano Varagnolo “Data centers control: challenges and opportunities”
17:15 Chuang Wang “Modeling and Simulation of Occupant Behavior in Building with Applications to Building Energy Performance Evaluation”
17:50 Closing Remark (Qing-Shan Jia)
Commercial, residential, and public buildings are responsible for nearly 40% of the energy consumption in many developed countries such as the United States of America and in many developing countries such as China. This number is still increasing fast in many developing countries. Comparing with transportation and industry, which are the other two major consumers of energy in our society, buildings have big energy saving potential. The theme of this CASE is Automation for a Sustainable Future. Smart buildings will be important ways to achieve this goal.
Smart buildings have attracted more and more attention in IEEE Robotics and Automation Society in recent years. We have witnessed the increasing number of submissions, publications, and sessions in the society conferences as well as transactions. It is the purpose of this workshop to discuss the research opportunities for RAS community in this field. We will discuss modeling, simulation, optimization, and testbeds in smart buildings. The invited speakers are active researchers in the field, and representing various leading research groups across the continents. This workshop will be of interest to not only those who are already in the field, but also those who want to enter the field. This will also be a good opportunity to discuss the research collaborations.
List of topics and their descriptions:
Exergy-based operation optimization of a distributed energy system through the energy-supply chain
Peter B. Luh
Developing sustainable energy systems is crucial in today’s world because of the depletion of fossil energy resources and global warming problems. Application of exergy principles in the context of energy supply systems may achieve a more efficient energy-supply chain and a rational use of energy in buildings. This paper presents the exergy-based operation optimization of a Distributed Energy System (DES) by considering the whole energy-supply chain from energy resources to user demands. The problem is challenging in view of the complicated interactions of devices and the modeling of exergy losses. To capture these complicated interactions, energy networks are established with exergy losses modeled at the conversion step. A multi-objective mixed integer programming problem is formulated. The problem is efficiently solved by the novel integration of the surrogate Lagrangian relaxation and branch-and-cut. The Pareto frontier, including the best possible trade-offs between the economic and exergetic objectives, is obtained by minimizing a weighted sum of the total energy cost and total exergy losses occurring in the energy conversion step. Results demonstrate that the use of high-quality energy resources is reduced by the reduction of exergy losses through the optimized operation of the energy-supply chain, leading to the sustainability of energy supply systems.
Occupancy estimation for smart buildings
Karl H. Johansson
Room occupants has a direct effect on the air quality indices, such as temperature, CO2, and humidity levels. As air conditioning unused spaces usually translates into energy waste, building automation systems benefit from occupancy information. This information can be obtained from dedicated hardware (cameras, RFID tags etc.), but such installations impose additional costs, privacy concerns, and might even be infeasible in old buildings. In this talk we will discuss the possibility of estimating room occupancy using only existing sensor measurements on CO2, temperature, and actuation signals. We develop and compare new occupancy estimation algorithms. The algorithms are implemented and evaluated on a smart building testbed. The talk is based on joint work with collaborators at KTH and LTU.
Building System Control Research in Tsinghua University-Some Recent Progresses
Qianchuan Zhao
How building control could be done is not an easy problem. There are many uncertainties and complexities involved. My focus will be on how joint work has been done so that a building control problem is studied from a system point of view with constraints/objective functions reflecting comfort, security and energy saving requirements. An overview of some related studies at Tsinghua University will be presented. We also pose challenges in this direction. As an example, we will show how indoor environment could be controlled based on a new human machine interface on smart phones instead of setpoint based control to achieve occupant satisfactory.
Smart Building Testbeds in SinBerBest
Pushkar P. Apte
In this talk we will review the design principles of the smart buildings testbed in the CREATE Tower in Singapore. Led by Professor Costas Spanos, a multi-disciplinary group of faculty investigators at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a transformative research collaboration with Singapore called Building Efficiency and Sustainability in the Tropics (SinBerBEST). The initial collaborators include Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the National University of Singapore (NUS), and other agencies and groups in Singapore. SinBerBEST’s mission is to create an ecosystem of researchers and change agents from academia, industry, and government, and to align them towards a common goal: to spearhead ideas and technologies that have the potential of dramatically improving building energy efficiency, while maintaining comfort, safety, security, and productivity in tropical buildings. Some of these ideas have been demonstrated in the recently completed smart buildings testbed in the CREATE Tower in Singapore, which will be reviewed in this talk.
Building Cyber Physical Systems – from Energy Saving to Fast Evacuation
(Samuel) Qing-Shan Jia
There is an increasing demand on energy efficiency, comfort, and safety in buildings. These different objectives may be achieved by building cyber physical systems (CPS) in the same time. Occupant-oriented wireless sensor network plays a key role in Building CPS, which collects information on the demand (what the occupant wants), the supply (what the building can offer), and how the two parts may coordinate with each other (the elasticity of the demand and the supply). In this talk, we will review the state of art and the state of practice in this field. In particular, we will see what the existing occupant oriented wireless sensor networks are and how these networks work. Then we will discuss how these networks may work together to improve energy efficiency under normal conditions and to improve the evacuation guidance under emergencies.
Data centers control: challenges and opportunities
Damiano Varagnolo
The world-wide operation of data centers is estimated to account to 2 percent of the global energy consumptions, a figure that has been steadily increasing in the past years, and is projected to continue with this trend. Efficient, sustainable and cost effective operations of data centers are thus a real need. But how can automatic control contribute to satisfying these needs? The opportunities are actually multiple, specially when considering networks of datacenters. For example, energy efficiency may be boosted by geographical thermal / computational load balancing and load shifting. Alternatively one may reuse the wasted heat and interact with district heating structures. Or one may coordinate with smart grids and smart cities for electrical peak shaving purposes. In this talk we describe the role of automatic control in the management of data centers, and review the state of the practice, the state of the art, the challenges and the opportunities associated to their operation.
Modeling and Simulation of Occupant Behavior in Building with Applications to Building Energy Performance Evaluation
Chuang Wang
Occupant behavior has significant impact on the energy consumption in residential and commercial buildings. Modeling and simulation of occupant behavior becomes a key issue in the prediction and evaluation of building energy performance. The challenges in this work comes from that occupant behaviors are random and diversified in nature, especially under normal conditions. In this talk we will review the various models to describe and to simulate the occupant behaviors in building, and discuss the applications to building energy performance evaluation by some examples. We will also introduce a related international research collaboration – IEA/EBC Annex 66 project “Definition and Simulation of Occupant Behavior in Buildings”.
Expected participants and their background:
This workshop will be of interested to both researchers those are already in the field, and researchers those want to enter the field. It shall be attractive both to faculties, postdocs, graduate students, or company audiences who are looking for the state of the art and the state of the practice in smart buildings. Minimum background in the field is required.
Organizer: (Samuel) Qing-Shan Jia, Tsinghua University
List of speakers and their biographical sketch:
Peter Luh
Peter B. Luh received his B.S. from National Taiwan University, M.S. from M.I.T., and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has been with the University of Connecticut since 1980, and currently is the SNET Professor of Communications & Information Technologies. He was the Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 2006 to 2009. He is also a member of the Chair Professors Group, Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CFINS) in the Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Professor Luh is a Fellow of IEEE. He was the VP of Publications of RAS (2008-2011), the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (2003-2007), and the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation (1999-2003). He received IEEE Robotics and Automation Society 2013 Pioneer Award for his pioneering contributions to the development of near-optimal and efficient planning, scheduling, and coordination methodologies for manufacturing and power systems. His research interests include Smart Power Systems – smart grid, design of auction methods for electricity markets, robust renewable (wind and solar) integration to the grid, and electricity load and price forecasting; Intelligent Manufacturing Systems – planning, scheduling, and coordination of design, manufacturing, and service activities; Smart and Green Buildings and Eco Communities – optimized energy management, HVAC fault detection and diagnosis, emergency crowd guidance, and eco communities.
Karl H. Johansson
Karl H. Johansson is Director of the ACCESS Linnaeus Centre and Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. He is a Wallenberg Scholar and has held a six-year Senior Researcher Position with the Swedish Research Council. He is also heading the Stockholm Strategic Research Area ICT The Next Generation. He received MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Lund University. He has held visiting positions at UC Berkeley (1998-2000) and California Institute of Technology (2006-2007). His research interests are in networked control systems, cyber-physical systems, and applications in transportation, energy, and automation systems. He has been a member of the IEEE Control Systems Society Board of Governors and the Chair of the IFAC Technical Committee on Networked Systems. He has been on the Editorial Boards of several journals, including Automatica, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, and IET Control Theory and Applications. He is currently on the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems and the European Journal of Control. He has been Guest Editor for special issues, including one issue of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control on cyber-physical systems and one of IEEE Control Systems Magazine on cyber-physical security. He was the General Chair of the ACM/IEEE Cyber-Physical Systems Week 2010 in Stockholm and IPC Chair of many conferences. He has served on the Executive Committees of several European research projects in the area of networked embedded systems. He received the Best Paper Award of the IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems in 2009 and the Best Theory Paper Award of the World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation in 2014. In 2009 he was awarded Wallenberg Scholar, as one of the first ten scholars from all sciences, by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. He was awarded Future Research Leader from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research in 2005. He received the triennial Young Author Prize from IFAC in 1996 and the Peccei Award from the International Institute of System Analysis, Austria, in 1993. He received Young Researcher Awards from Scania in 1996 and from Ericsson in 1998 and 1999. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Qianchuan Zhao
Qianchuan Zhao received the B.E. degree in automatic control in July 1992, the B.S. degree in applied mathematics in July 1992, and MS and Ph.D. degrees in control theory and its applications in July 1996, all from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is currently a Professor and Associate Director of the Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CFINS) https://cfins.au.tsinghua.edu.cn, Department of Automation, Tsinghua University. He was a Visiting Scholar at Carnegie Mellon University (worked with Prof. Bruce Krogh), Pittsburgh, PA, and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, in 2000 and 2002, respectively. He was a Visiting Professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in 2006. His current research focuses on the modeling, control and optimization of complex networked systems. He has published more than 80 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Dr. Zhao is an associate editor for the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network System, an associate editor for the joint conference CDC-ECC’05 and International Program.
Pushkar P. Apte
Pushkar P. Apte received his Masters and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University in Materials Science and Elelctrical Engineering, and his Bachelor’s degree in Ceramic Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi, India. Dr. Apte is the Director of Strategic Initiatives, CITRIS @ Berkeley. Dr. Apte has worked with Texas Instruments Incorporated on cutting-edge research and technology development, with McKinsey & Company as their Global Semiconductor Business Expert, and with the Semiconductor Industry Association as their Vice President of Technology Programs. Dr. Apte has over 50 publications and presentations in prestigious international journals, conferences, and institutions, including several Invited Papers. He has received the Norman Hackerman Young Author Award from the Electrochemical Society for Best Paper in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society, and the Graduate Student Award from the Materials Research Society for Outstanding Research Performance. Dr. Apte holds 2 U.S. Patents.
(Samuel) Qing-Shan Jia
Qing-Shan Jia received his B.E. degree in automation in July 2002, and the Ph.D. degree in control science and engineering in July 2006, both from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Center for Intelligent and Networked Systems (CFINS), Department of Automation, Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University. He was a visiting scholar in Harvard in 2006, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 2010, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013, respectively. His main research interest is simulation-based performance evaluation and optimization for large-scale networked systems, with applications in smart buildings and smart grids. Dr. Jia is an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, and Discrete Event Dynamic Systems – Theory and Applications. He is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Smart Buildings Technical Committee co-Chair and the IEEE Control Systems Society Discrete Event Systems Technical Committee Chair. He was the student activity chair of CASE 2013, and is the special sessions co-chair of CASE 2015. He is also the national organization committee of WODES 2016, and the student activity chair of CDC 2016.
Damiano Varagnolo
Damiano Varagnolo received the Dr. Eng. degree in automation engineering and the Ph.D. degree in information engineering from the University of Padova respectively in 2005 and 2011. He visited UC Berkeley as a scholar researcher in 2010, while from March 2012 to December 2013 he worked as a post-doctoral scholar at KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. Currently he is Assistant Professor at LTU, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, with interests on distributed optimization and control for networks of HVAC systems and datacenters.
Chuang Wang
Chuang Wang received his Bachelor and Ph.D. degree in building science in 2006 and 2015, respectively, both from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is currently a postdoc in Building Energy Research Center, Tsinghua University. He has profession skills and experience on building energy modeling and the evaluation of building energy efficient technology. His research interest is the modeling and simulation of occupant behavior in building and its impact on building energy performance.