2014
The Smart Residential HVAC (SRH) control system is proposed to monitor and control temperatures in multiple rooms independently. SRH will have sensors placed in each room to monitor occupancy and temperature status. Then the data will be sent to a central controller to determine the on/off state for the controlled valves on each duct openings in each room. Occupied rooms will be maintained by SRH at a pre-set human comfort temperature, while unoccupied rooms will be maintained at a relatively low temperature to reduce energy demand. A two-floor townhouse in Ann Arbor will be selected for system installation, experiment and data testing. We will build a simulation model for the selected townhouse to obtain annual HVAC energy demand and to determine the system parameters. Then we will install and configure the sensors based on the simulation results and make test runs in the house. Based on the actual energy demand data we will calibrate the simulated annual energy demand and achieve the total energy saving of this project. The expected total energy saving will be around 25%.
Rui Chen (College of Engineering), Liang Ding PhD (Ross School of Business), Heng Kuang College of Engineering), Rudai Shan (Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning)