Process centric building energy management-as-a-service

Abstract

Business operations are an inseparable part of overall business services and energy consumption. Multiple levels of information regarding building components (architectural, electrical and mechanical), environmental conditions (outdoor and indoor) and occupant behaviour patterns, mostly driven by everyday business processes (schedules, loads, specific business episodes related to occupancy patterns and building operations), are considered necessary for effective and efficient modelling of building energy performance. Given the trend towards low energy consumption, actively engaging occupants during the building operation is critical to achieve high energy efficiency without scarifying end users comfort. The aim of this paper is to report the design and development of an innovative energy management framework to enable the alignment of fine-grain building energy use data to the organizational operational activities, allowing thus for a holistic view over the organizational energy performance. The main principle for the proposed framework is about linking Business Process Modeling (BPM) with Occupant Behaviour patterns and Building Information Modelling (BIM), the model that contains information for the building spaces and resources in terms of material and equipment. The exchange of information among these models is essential towards energy efficient buildings. By linking core operational aspects (equipment usage) and environmental conditions (temperature, humidity and luminance) to occupants' behaviours underlying business processes and organizational structures, the aim is to enhance the comprehensiveness and easy interpretation of building energy performance metrics within an extended enterprise performance evaluation framework.