Distributed detection of events for evaluation of energy efficiency in buildings

Abstract

Increasing awareness of energy production evolution and global warming issues have forced regulatory international organizations to supervise energy consumption in different areas. Specifically the energy efficient operation of buildings, consumers of almost a third of the energy produced globally, is to be evaluated by means of specific procedures. The usual methods involve the use of normalized software engines prior to the construction of the building. Two pending issues hamper the accuracy of the evaluations: (1) in such procedures actual usage patterns of the building are taken into account by means of highly simplifying assumptions and (2) no procedure is envisaged to evaluate pre-existing buildings. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are proposed to be employed in order to measure the actual energy consumption behaviour of buildings. A general structure of a scalable WSN and basic algorithms both to continuously monitor energy-consumption patterns and to detect whether energy usage in buildings is inefficient, are presented. A hierarchical topology with fusion centers (FCs), wireless sensor nodes organized in clusters and in-network distributed detection is presented. This work aims at the scalability and reliability of communications of the nodes with the FCs, in order to establish a reference design. Finally, simulations results are presented in order to show the need of accurate measurements of the usage patterns of a building in order to precisely evaluate its energy efficiency.