A few months ago, my former colleagues published a retrospective of the Kubik test facility. I feel linked to them and the facility itself as we were office mates, and we developed experiments in the facility for many years. So, I could not resist looking back and commenting.
First, what is Kubik? It’s a full-scale test facility aimed at supp…
Thermal performance assessment of glazed envelopes. Redefining experimental limits
I was introduced to Riccardo Gazzin about a year ago. He was quite a smart engineer trying to redefine performance assessment methods for glazed envelopes. Particularly interested in understanding how accurate these methods are, and in developing shorter experimental methods.
We had a couple of meetings with his supervisors at EURAC (Miren Juar…
Modelar un edificio para controlarlo mejor
En su momento hablé del despliegue de sistemas de control predictivo, pero dejé apartado los procesos de modelado predictivo en sí.
Retomo el caso del edificio 59 del Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, un edificio moderno con oficinas en dos de sus cuatro plantas y climatizado por ventilación con 4 unidades rooftop. Es un ejemplo bastant…
Clustering Daily Energy Patterns to improve Heat Load Prediction: New code release
I have talked on my collaborations with Mikel Lumbreras in several previous posts. One of our recent activity was on how to use clustering to identify day types (“How will my building behave tomorrow?...”), which is extended into a full scientific paper at Journal of Building Engineering.
There, we focused on understanding and predictin…
Un simulador para jugar con controladores
Conocí a Rubén Mulero cuando comenzó a trabajar en Tecnalia justo antes del COVID. Rubén, que tiene formación en ingeniería informática, tenía interés en investigar en aplicaciones de Inteligencia Artificial para sistemas de control de energía en edificios, con lo que la colaboración con él surgió de forma natural.
Él necesitaba u…
Smart buildings, Comfort, Indoor Air Quality, Load Flexibility… Is it all possible?
A few weeks ago, I was honored with the possibility to deliver a keynote lecture at Splitech. This was my second time attending this great conference, organized by Sandro, Petar and Ana. And they facilitated an empty slot for me to talk.
What is the right topic to talk about in front of an experienced audience on Energy and IT topics? I propose…
Not all Heat Loads are equal. Separating Hot Water from Space Heating
As we use energy for many things, heat load data is typically provided in aggregated figures. Typically, the only separation is based on the energy carrier. As there are specific utilities providing each carrier, there are independent data streams for each energy carrier.
But still all heat loads are aggregated within the same load data. Normal…
Putting Silicon in Glass. How to model BIPV systems
As electricity demand rises and PV prices drop, finding new places to install solar panels is becoming a challenge. Meanwhile, modern buildings are using more glass, which means higher cooling demands—and more electricity use. So, why not merge the two? Integrating PV into glazing seems like a smart solution, but it’s not as simple as it sound…
Physics-informed outlier detection?
When dealing with data, we need to know if this data is reliable to build models, or not. This is a tricky issue, as data is typically gathered automatically with very little supervision. Data quality needs to be defined a posteriori, with little-to-no registers on system anomalies. So, how can we actually do this?
Some typical solution for thi…
Introducing Inertia into Energy Signature models
I´m passionate about simple models. When I explain heat load analysis, I just tell people: We use energy when it’s too cold or too hot outside. And simple heating-degree-based models (PRISM) or changepoint models are my preferred tools to showcase this.
But we all know that temperature is not the only factor influencing energy loads. Loads a…