Fuzzy control for improving energy management within indoor building environments

Research on energy efficiency in buildings has proved that the design and even the sophisticated facilities such as Building Energy Management systems (BEMS), aiming to improve the indoor environmental conditions while minimizing the energy needs, are not sufficient enough due to users interference. Users are a dynamic part of the building, therefore they should be taken into account in the control strategy. Latest trends in designing Intelligent Building Energy Management Systems (IBEMS) integrate a Man Machine Interface that could store the users preferences and adapt the control strategy accordingly. The objective of the present paper is to present the advantages of the fuzzy control techniques together with a man machine interface based on a smart card terminal in satisfying the users preferences. A fuzzy controller is developed and the minimization of energy consumption is achieved by the use of a suitable cost function for the whole system. The overall control system including the cost function has been modeled and tested by using the software tool MATLAB/SIMULINK