Energy and comfort management of the educational spaces through IoT network for IAQ assessment in the eLUX lab

Abstract

IoT networks for data gathering in the buildings allow to control and manage the operational phase of the systems for ventilation and IAQ, optimizing the energy flows and the indoor comfort conditions. The concept of Cognitive Building steers the implementation of such networks in the assets considering the sensors as scattered systems to inform and actuate the adaptation strategies which are crucial when variables have to be included in the process management. Variables as weather, occupancy flows during the day, energy production by renewable energies, energy storage strategies, affect the indoor conditions, the rate of use of the HVAC systems and the energy management of the used/storage resources. The eLUX lab at the Smart Campus of the University of Brescia is a pilot building in the field and it has been monitoring since 2017. The indoor conditions monitoring could unveil critical situations defined by temperature, humidity and indoor air quality (IAQ) in the educational spaces and envisage strategies and scenarios related to energy demand defined by the occupancy stream. The IoT network collects data about indoor air quality in the different spaces and it is used to verify and increase the accuracy on occupancy estimation. The HVAC management referred to the effective occupancy can enable an energy management process based on user-centred approach empowering an increment of the comfort hours facing critical situations and it is possible to promote actuation strategies preserving energy efficiency and IAQ (e.g. increase ventilation to decrease the CO2 concentration, decrease temperature and control relative humidity in the indoor spaces by window opening or modulation of the fans and dehumidification systems activation). The educational spaces have been adopted as case studies to analyse the actual indoor conditions and come up with a detailed description of the profiles of use (i.e. occupancy, lighting, equipment, HVAC, CO2) supporting effective management policies. The paper describes the analyses on the data collected to understand when and how the indoor conditions can be improved to preserve the learning performance of the users. The research addresses one of the main topics of the eLUX living lab.