An agent-based open source platform for building energy management

The objective of this paper is to propose a building energy management (BEM) platform that allows sensing and control of equipment in small- and medium-sized buildings. The proposed platform aims to improve energy efficiency, reduce energy consumption, and foster demand response (DR) implementation by controlling three major loads in buildings, including HVAC, lighting and plug loads. In addition, it aims to offer scalability, robustness, plug and play, open protocol, interoperability, cost-effectiveness, and local and remote monitoring. The software architecture, including user interface, application and data management, operating system and framework, and connectivity are discussed in this paper with the special focus on the Multi-agent system (MAS) development which is the core of the platform. A laboratory test bed is employed to demonstrate the functionalities of the proposed software platform.