A smart university platform for building energy monitoring and savings

T. Stavropoulos, G. Koutitas, D. Vrakas, E. Kontopoulos, I. Vlahavas (2016) A smart university platform for building energy monitoring and savings, Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments

This paper presents a novel, integrated platform for energy monitoring, management and savings in the context of a Smart Uni-versity Building. Namely, the proposed Smart International Hellenic University (IHU) platform integrates an intelligent, rule-based agent that enforces savings, while a variety of applications offers user interaction with the system and the means for moni-toring and management. The application layer is built over a common Web Service middleware, incorporating semantic interoper-ability. Monitoring applications visualize raw and aggregated sensor readings, such as building energy disaggregation, environ-mental measurements and data center efficiency. Extensive monitoring capabilities allow users to take immediate action and devise policies towards energy-savings. Such policies are, then, autonomously enforced by the intelligent, hybrid agent, which is capable of both deliberative (long-term) and reactive (immediate) actions. The agent is also integrated with the OpenADR standard for receiving provider instructions in future Smart Grids. A pilot deployment of the agent with expert-formulated policies at the IHU premises, has managed to reduce the total daily consumption of a typical university office by approximately 16%.