Building Automation
Our vision is a building stock operated with energy-efficiency, flexibility, and transparency.
Trough automation, interconnection and innovative control approaches it is possible to increase the thermal comfort, indoor air quality and the efficiency of energy systems within buildings and districts, without changing components or investing in heat insulation.
Buildings, especially interconnected buildings, offer the opportunity to adapt their electric power consumption to system wide load and supply. They form an already existing storage, which can be activated through innovative control approaches without creating huge costs. Thus, the flexibility of buildings can lower the energy consumption.
For this we develop control approaches and strategies, monitoring and evaluation concepts as well as communication interfaces and system ontologies. Triggered by the centralization of building technology data topics such as Cloud Computing, Machine Learning, object-controlled monitoring and data analysis are increasingly moving into our research interest. In the future we will devote ourselves to merging data with simulations as a basis for augmented building and property operation in order to contribute towards transparent and error-free operation. As further research we perform system optimizations for complex/ combined building technology systems and develop scalable applicable and self-learning control concepts for building energy systems as well as customized controls for special problems.
We use the entire range of scientific methods ranging from literature research, theoretical considerations, modeling and simulation, software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop experiments, and a building automation test stand to a demonstration quarter. The demonstration quarter consists of the multifunctional main building of the E.ON Energy Research Center, two experimental halls with a high degree of building technology equipment, a more passive office building and a battery storage facility. The buildings can be used for demonstrations starting with special control technologies for subsystems and ending with cross-quarter control concepts, for example for grid services of networked buildings.
As contract research, we carry out system optimization for complex/combined building services systems and develop customized controls for special problems.