Naturally ventilated and mixed-mode buildings—Part II: Optimal control

Natural ventilation and a combination of natural ventilation and fan-assisted cooling, in lieu of or as a supplement to air conditioning, offer significant reductions in building energy use in appropriate climates. In current practice, such buildings are operated with heuristic control strategies, involving the opening of windows under suitable indoor and outdoor conditions. Such methods are sub-optimal because they do not account for building thermal dynamics and predicted weather and therefore do not make decisions on the basis of estimated future conditions. This paper uses building thermal predictions from a data-driven thermal model to assess the impact of window and internal openings and fan operation. It then develops a means of ranking and choosing among a set of cooling strategies, with the objective of maintaining occupied-period temperatures within a specified range and minimizing fan energy use. The control algorithms were assessed with data from a test building.