Neural Network based downscaling of Building Energy Management System data

Building Energy Management Systems (BEMSs) are responsible for maintaining indoor environment by controlling Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and lighting systems in buildings. Buildings worldwide account for a significant portion of world energy consumption. Thus, increasing building energy efficiency through BEMSs can result in substantial financial savings. In addition, BEMSs can significantly impact the productivity of occupants by maintaining a comfortable environment. To increase efficiency and maintain comfort, modern BEMSs rely on a large array of sensors inside the building that provide detailed data about the building state. However, due to various reasons, buildings frequently lack sufficient number of sensors, resulting in a suboptimal state awareness. In such cases, a cost effective method for increasing state awareness is needed. Therefore, this paper presents a novel method for increasing state awareness through increasing spatial resolution of data by means of data downscaling. The presented method estimates the state of occupant zones using state data gathered at floor level using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The presented method was tested on a real-world CO₂ dataset, and compared to a time based estimation of CO₂ concentration. The downscaling method was shown to be capable of consistently producing accurate estimates while being more accurate than time based estimations.