Advanced Control Solutions for Building Systems

The path of an innovative technology from the research stage to the validation in real test beds and subsequent commercialization and wider deployment may not always be straightforward. Multiple domain-specific constraints need to be considered and properly addressed. In case of the advanced control solutions for building's Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, one needs to keep in mind limitations given by the legacy control hardware, typical instrumentation levels, and overall cost-to-benefit ratio. The paper is written from the corporate R&D perspective and discusses methodological and practical aspects of design, validation and implementation of advanced control solutions in the application domain of commercial buildings. All issues are illustrated based on experience from the development of two different technologies: an embedded solution for control performance monitoring and a cloud-based supervisory control for HVAC systems.