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ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
It is well-known that the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air condi- HVAC Operation, Chiller Sequencing, Applied Machine Learning
tioning) dominates electricity consumption in commercial build-
ings. Alongside, electricity prices are increasing in several nations ACM Reference Format:
around the world, putting pressure on facility managers to reduce Zimu Zheng, Qiong Chen, Cheng Fan, Nan Guan, Arun Vishwanath, Dan
Wang, and Fangming Liu. 2018. Data Driven Chiller Sequencing for Reducing
the electricity consumption incurred in operating their HVAC and
HVAC Electricity Consumption in Commercial Buildings. In Proceedings of
buildings. In this paper, we focus on one of the core problems in e-Energy ’18: International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy
building operation, namely chiller sequencing for reducing HVAC ’18). ACM, Germany, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3208903.3208913
electricity consumption. Our contributions are threefold. First, we
make a case for why it is important to quantify the performance
profile of a chiller, namely coefficient of performance (COP), at run- 1 INTRODUCTION
time, by developing a data-driven COP estimation methodology. Centralized chilled water based HVAC plants are commonly used
Second, we show that predicting COP accurately is a non-trivial for cooling in large commercial buildings. These HVAC plants con-
problem, requiring considerable computation time. To overcome sume anywhere between 40% and 70% of a building’s total electricity
this barrier, we develop a dominant-graph based COP prediction consumption [1, 2], a vast majority of which can be attributed to the
technique and a time-constrained chiller sequencing algorithm inte- chillers in the HVAC. In several nations around the world, the elec-
grating the COP predictions, which strikes a good balance between tricity bill paid by commercial buildings, which is dominated by the
electricity consumption reduction and ease of use for real-world energy consumption of the HVAC, is often in the top-three list of an
deployment. Finally, we evaluate the performance of our scheme organization’s operating expenses [3]. This trend is putting upward
by applying it to real-world data, spanning 4 years, obtained from pressure on facility managers to improve the energy efficiency of
multiple chillers across 3 large commercial buildings in Hong Kong. their buildings by means of reducing the electricity consumption
The results show that our solution is able to save on average 21 associated with HVAC operation.
MWh of electricity consumption in each of the 3 buildings, which Various techniques have been proposed in the literature for miti-
is an improvement of over 30% compared to the current mode of gating the energy impact of building HVAC. These include control-
operation of the chillers in the buildings. We offer our data-driven ling the HVAC based on the spatio-temporal profile of occupancy
chiller sequencing framework under time constraints as an effective inside a building [4], pre-cooling a building in advance of expected
and practical mechanism for reducing the electricity consumption increase in occupancy [5], and incorporating renewables such as
associated with HVAC operation in commercial buildings. solar panels and battery storage into the energy mix [6].
While all of these approaches have merit, in this paper, we focus
CCS CONCEPTS on the problem of chiller sequencing for reducing HVAC electricity
consumption in commercial buildings. Chiller sequencing refers to
• Information systems → Data analytics; Process control sys-
operating the most efficient combination of chillers in a building at
tems; • Hardware → Power estimation and optimization; •
real-time to meet the time-varying cooling demand. For example,
Applied computing → Decision analysis;
sequencing a building with two chillers [0.5, 0.7] implies that chiller
1 and chiller 2 are operating at 50% and 70% of their maximum rated
capacity, respectively. Thus, the sequencing problem is to allocate
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or
classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed the cooling load at any given time to the chillers in the most energy
for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation efficient manner so that the overall cooling demand of the building
on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the is satisfied while at the same time the electricity consumed by the
author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission chillers is kept at a minimum [7].
and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. Most prior work on chiller sequencing has focused on developing
e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany techniques for predicting the cooling demand accurately. However,
© 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5767-8/18/06. . . $15.00 the efficacy of chiller sequencing control also relies heavily on the
https://doi.org/10.1145/3208903.3208913 run-time performance profile of the chillers, namely the COP under
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e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany Zimu Zheng et al.
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Data driven Chiller Sequencing in Commercial Buildings e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany
(Avg. COP)
then needs to adjust the cooling load of each (active) chiller until 1 8
Chiller
6
the cumulative load of Q is attained (Feedback Control). 2 4
3 2
2.2 COP Computation 0 20 40 60 80 100
0
(Var. COP)
8
Chiller ID
the cooling load. Note that the amount of electricity consumed by a 1
2 6
chiller is not only determined by Q but also by its energy-efficiency. 3 4
Intuitively, if this efficiency is low (e.g. due to poor maintenance), 4 2
5
then more electricity will be consumed to support a required cool- 0
0 20 40 60 80 100
ing demand. It is therefore of paramount importance to quantify Load (%)
the energy-efficiency of a chiller, which is measured by its COP, Figure 3: COP Variation for different chillers and loads.
determined as follows. Table 2: Example of a 10 × 5 updated profile on 2015.12.31 in
The cooling load of a HVAC plant at a given time is the sum Pacific Place II, with out-of-date entries discarded.
of the cooling load Q i over all chillers i, i.e., Q = i Q i , where
Í
Load Chiller 1 Chiller 2 Chiller 3 Chiller 4 Chiller 5
Q i = c i × mi × ∆T i . Here, c i is the thermal capacity of water 50% 7.4 - - 7.6 7.0
(kJ/kg◦ C), mi is the chilled water mass flow rate (kg/s) and ∆T i 55% - - - - -
is the temperature difference between the returned and supplied 60% 6.4 7.1 4.7 6.9 -
chilled water (◦ C) [12]. All these quantities are logged by our BMS. 65% - - - - -
The COP of chiller i to support cooling load Q i is given by Q i /Ei , 70% 7.3 5.6 7.2 - -
where Ei is the electrical power consumed by chiller i to deliver 75% - - - - -
the required amount of cooling. In practice, after a HVAC plant is 80% - 6.9 5.4 - -
installed in a building, there is a commissioning phase wherein a set 85% - - - - -
of cooling loads is tested to ascertain the performance of the chillers.
90% - - 7.0 - 6.6
Following each test, values of Q and E are recorded which enable
95% - - - - -
the facility manager to determine the corresponding COP profiles
for the chillers. Once in production, certain statistical averaging Data-driven techniques can thus play a crucial role in accurate COP
techniques are used in the ensuing short period of operation to prediction for improved chiller sequencing in the real world. For
update the COP under different cooling loads [13, 14]. interested readers, a further discussion on the possible benefit of
2.3 Observation of Significant COP Variation accurate COP prediction is available in Appendix A.
Reliable chiller sequencing depends on the COP across all the load- 3 OVERVIEW OF TIME-CONSTRAINED
ing conditions for chiller i. However, when we communicated with
facility managers and applied the above computation on the histor-
DATA-DRIVEN CHILLER SEQUENCING
ical data retrieved from the BMS, we learned and confirmed that (T-DCS) FRAMEWORK
not only does the COP degrade over time and raise after mainte- In this section, we describe our solution framework for the data-
nance, which is well-known, but the COP fluctuates markedly over driven chiller sequencing problem. The framework comprises three
different cooling loads and environmental conditions. steps. An overview of each of these steps is described next.
To be specific, we first plot the average COPs as a function of the 3.1 T-DCS Problem Definition
cooling loads in Fig. 2. We picked the first regular chiller from each
building. It can be seen that these chillers often operate between 1. The Data-driven COP Prediction (DPP) Sub-Problem. Our
40% and 80% load, and their COP fluctuates somewhat randomly idea is to develop individualized COP for each chiller by applying
between zero and eight. The COP values for other loads are missing. machine learning techniques using historical chiller data. A pri-
For the same chillers, we plot in Fig. 3 the variation in their COP (i.e. vate cloud is established to store the historical data from the BMS.
difference between max and min) under different loading regimes, When a cooling demand D arrives, the cloud can perform chiller
and note that there is a large fluctuation even for a given load. For sequencing assisted by our data-driven COP prediction schemes.
e.g., COP for chiller 1 varies between 5.7 and 8.2 for 70% load, and To this end, we first introduce the Data-driven COP Prediction
between 1.8 to 8.3 for 60% load. This is because the chiller COP Sub-Problem.
in practice is highly dependent on a variety of factors. We also Formal definition of DPP Sub-Problem: Given the current
observe from the data that if we classify the COPs at 5% cooling prediction task, infer the COP profile COP which minimizes the pre-
diction loss, i.e., 1/T t <T ||Ft (X t ,W ) −COPt ||2 , where X denotes
Í
load increments, then more than 40% of the COPs are missing.
Chillers are complex systems. The COP fluctuation observed the features at time t of total time T ; COPt denotes the predicted
above is the result of thermodynamic processes under changing COP for all chillers at time t; F (·) denotes the learning and predic-
environmental conditions and configurations of the local building tion model and W denotes its parameters.
context, as well as the impact of other parameters such as chiller 2. The T-DCS Problem. The next step is to determine the opti-
degradation and exposure to different seasons/weather. These fac- mal sequencing of chillers. To do so, one needs to be wary of the
tors are exceedingly difficult to capture within an analytical model. following: (1) The cooling demand changes over time, so chiller
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Data driven Chiller Sequencing in Commercial Buildings e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany
PacificII
(Score)
0.8
In the previous section, we described a solution for the Data-driven 2
0.6
3
0.4
COP Prediction (DPP) sub-problem. However, the solution method 4
0.2
5
cannot be directly applied in practice: (1) owing to the time-complexity 0 20 40 60 80 100
0.0
associated with the prediction technique, which is computationally Load (%)
expensive. (2) This is exacerbated by the fact that data-driven pre- Figure 6: The probability of becoming best operation for dif-
diction must be conducted in an on-line manner due to the sparsity ferent entries (Chiller 4 and 5 are backup chillers).
issue, forcing the prediction model to be updated frequently to
[500 Trees]) for a subset of the entries in Table 2, and using an
account for the time-varying nature of the cooling demand and
efficient but less accurate learning model (Linear Regression) for
change in operating conditions. To ensure high performance of our
the remaining entries. The question is how to decide which entries
model, in this paper we update its parameters each time before
should be processed with the expensive learning model, in order
sequencing is performed. (3) Finally, there is often a time constraint
to maximize the overall optimality of our DCS approach under the
for each chiller sequencing operation, as mentioned earlier. Here is
time constraint.
an example of the above issues: predicting the COP for each entry
Fig. 5 shows the electricity consumption of data-driven sequenc-
in Table 2 (i.e. for a given chiller and a cooling load) takes about
ing with 40% and 80% randomly discarded entries to be predicted
20 minutes using AdaBoost [500 trees] for a TB-level dataset on a
with the expensive learning model (while the remaining is pre-
private cloud with a 16-core CPU and 12 GB memory. So predicting
dicted with the efficient model). We see a 13.21% and 25.63% higher
the COP for the 50 entries in Table 2 would require 50 × 20 = 1000
electricity consumption, which eliminate 27.80% and 53.95% of our
minutes = 16.67 hours, which is significantly longer than the typical
maximum potential saving, respectively. In the following, we will
chiller sequencing period (of two hours [15]), and thus cannot be
show that by carefully selecting the entries to be processed with
accomplished before the deadline.
the expensive learning model, the gain of our approach can be
A natural way to solve this problem is to provide higher com-
significantly improved under the time constraint.
putation capacity to finish the COP prediction before the deadline,
but this will incur considerable costs. For our example, for a service 5.1 Implementation Overview
provider of BMS in charge of 10 buildings, finishing our proposed The key observation of our approach is that, while in principle
DPP-based Chiller Sequencing (DCS) within the typical chiller se- all COP entries may be selected to form the chiller sequencing, in
quencing period of two hours requires 87 m4.xlarge instances and practice only a small subset of them are frequently selected in the
10-TB General Purpose SSD (gp2) volume on Amazon Web Service optimal sequence. The historical best operations can be computed
(AWS), for which the total annual price is $123, 975 (m4.xlarge) with the sequencing optimization based on the ground truth of COP
+$14, 746 (gp2)= $138, 721. of 1460 days from 2012 to 2015. Then we can count the number of
In this paper, we propose to solve this problem by reducing the cases for each entry to be selected as the best operation and thus
computation workload processed in each period, by only conduct- obtain the probability to become optimal. For example, if an entry
ing COP prediction with the expensive learning model (AdaBoost is selected in 100 days as the best operation over the total 1460
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e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany Zimu Zheng et al.
days, its probability to become optimal is computed as 100 / 1460 sequences that include Entry 1, for e.g. the loads for the five chillers
= 6.84%. Figure 6 shows the probability for different entries to be being (55%, 60%, 60%, 60%, 60%), (55%, 70%, 70%, 75%, 70%), and so
selected as the best operation in the whole year 2015 with a model on. We denote these sequences as Sequence 1, Sequence 2, etc. Let
trained with historical data of 2012-2014. The regular chillers often Prob. 1 and Prob. 2 denote the probabilities of Sequences 1 and 2
operate between load 50% and 80%, and sometimes operate on 0% being selected as the optimal sequence, respectively (probability
load (switched off). The backup chillers 4 and 5 are seldom used computed as described in Section 5.1). The higher the probability is
and almost always remain on 0% load. for a sequence, the more likely that it will be selected as the optimal
Intuitively, one should prioritize the entries, which is to order sequence (in turn increasing the ranking or priority of the entries
them according to the possibility for them to be selected as the op- in the sequence). We denote the priority of Entry 1 as Pri. 1, which
timal operation, and apply the expensive learning model to higher- is computed as Pri. 1 = 1 - Prob. 1. Similarly for Pri. 2. The lower
priority entries first, until the end of the period. However, the the priority score the higher is its importance. Assuming Prob. 1 =
possibility for an entry to be selected also changes over time, so 0.2 and Prob. 2 = 0.8, then Entry 2 will be prioritized above Entry 1
the priority should also be adjusted dynamically. In Section 5.2, we because Pri. 2 = 0.2 < Pri. 1 = 0.8.
will present how to decide this priority in detail.
1. Factors to Decide the Entry Priority. To decide the entry pri-
Based on the above observations, we propose the Time-Constrained
ority, we select several important factors which help to indicate
DCS (T-DCS) approach, the pseudo-code for which is shown in Al-
the probability of entries to be selected in the optimal solution, as
gorithm 1. In each period, we first predict the COP of each entry by
summarized in Table 4. These factors fall into two categories: Me-
Linear Regression (line 2), used as their initial profiles. Second, we
chanical Factors and Statistical Factors. In the following, we explain
calculate the priority ordering of the entries in the current period
these factors in detail.
jointly using multiple factors (line 3, which will be explained in
Mechanical Factors reflect the mechanical performance of a
detail in Section 5.2). Then we iteratively update the profiles of the
chiller operation. They directly affect the possibility for a chiller
entries using the expensive COP prediction model (line 5), accord-
operation to be optimal. We consider two mechanical factors:
ing to the priority of the entries, until the available computation
time expires. Finally, the optimal sequencing (line 7) is selected • Cooling Load, which is a clearly important factor as the
based on the up-to-date COP. Note that the stop condition of line 4 total cooling load of the solution must meet the cooling
does not consider the computation time for selecting the optimal demand.
sequencing, because it can be ignored compared to the duration of • Electricity Consumption over a period under the corre-
the COP prediction procedure. sponding cooling load and with the average COP value of the
past period. This is an important factor because our objective
Algorithm 1 Time-Constrained DCS (T-DCS) is to minimize the electricity consumption.
1: S ← possible sequencing, D ← cooling demand Statistical factors reflect the performance of a chiller operation
2: P ← LinearRegression() ▷ Fill all entries with initial values. in the statistical view over the historical data. In particular, we
3: S ′ ← JointPriorityOrdering(S) consider the following two factors in this category:
4: while not yet reach the deadline do • Past Success refers to the number of cases that an entry is
5: P ← ExpensiveCOPPrediction(S’) selected in the optimal solution in the past. In general, if the
6: end while chiller status, configuration, and environment do not change
7: S ← SelectOptimalSequencing(D, P) too much, a chiller operation that works well in the past will
8: return S likely work well in the current period.
• Prediction Accuracy is the average similarity between the
5.2 Joint Priority Ordering predicted performance profile and the real performance pro-
file for a given operation in the past. This is also an important
To find the priority of entries for prediction, we first select Factors to
factor since an accurate prediction can reduce the possibility
decide the entry priority. With the Historical priority determination
of failure in meeting the cooling demand, and thus decreases
showing the priority of entries in the similar situations of the past,
the probability to launch the energy-inefficient protecting
we develop the Joint score and priority determination to obtain the
process using backup chillers.
final priority of the entry.
Example: Referring to Table 2, assume we have two entries for Note that the weight of these factors in the final decision of the
Chiller 1 COP. The first corresponding to Chiller 1 running at 55% entry priority may be different under different cooling demands.
load (denoted as Entry 1) and the second corresponding to Chiller 1 Due to page limitation, we put the discussion of the priority for
running at 80% load (denoted as Entry 2). There could me multiple each factor under different cooling demands in Appendix C.
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Data driven Chiller Sequencing in Commercial Buildings e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany
where r kt denote the historical priority of the factors for a past time
instant t and r ki
t ∈ r t denote the ith value of r t . With the historical
k k
j
priority r kt , the score sk can be inferred for each factor k of entry
j. Basically, the higher the priority of an entry is in the past, the
higher is its score in the present. 2
3. Joint Score and Priority Determination. To jointly consider
Figure 7: Minimum electricity consumption as a function of the dynamic priorities of different factors, we also compute the
j
the number of searched entries ranked by different factors. joint score of an entry using a weighted sum of these scores sk . The
joint scoring function F (j) for entry j is defined as
Figure 7 shows minimum electricity consumption with the his-
torical data in the past four years, with respect to the number of K
Õ
j j
entries visited in the searching procedure using the priority decided F (j) = Mk sk .
by each of the above four factors. We can see from the figure that k
prioritizing the entries by Past Success and Prediction Accuracy j
where Mk denotes the weight of the kth factor of entry j.
(in the descending order) reduces about 90% of the search space to
The weight of each factor is proportional to the similarity be-
reach the optimal solution, and prioritizing the entries by Cooling
tween its current value and the most similar value in the past time
Load and Electricity Consumption (in the ascending order) reduces
instances t ′ ∈ T ′ . More specifically, for factor k, we compute the
about 70% of the search space. j
average minimum distance mk between the current value COP j .r k
2. Historical Priority Determination. With above factors for and the most similar value r ki
′
t of the same factor for t ′ ∈ T ′ .
each entry, we can learn the priority of entries from the past data.
Basically, the same entry works well for similar conditions in the j 1 Õ t′
past can be useful in the present. In the following we start by mk = MinDistancei < |r t ′ | (r ki , COP j .r k ), ∀k.
|T ′ | ′ ′ k
t ∈T
deciding the priority of the values of each factor r kt for the past
data, which are used to decide the priority in the present. To avoid the noise from the different value range of the factors,
j j
In general, the more important a sequence is, the more important the final weight Mk is also normalized across the distance mk of
its entries can be. With such an idea, the priority of the entries is j max(m j )−m
j
then decided by the priority of the entries’ sequences in which k factors, i.e., Mk = max(m j )−min(m k
j ) , ∀k. Finally, the priority is
they are a part of (as given in the example above). Two types of determined by ranking the entries with the joint score.
relationships are used for priority decision. For interested readers, a brief evaluation of joint priority ordering
• Dominant Relationship compares entries used in different is available in Appendix D.
sequences. These entries are clearly comparable because
their priorities can be inferred according to the priority of 6 PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
their respective sequences, which can be obtained according Experimental Setting. The total data collected from the BMS is
to the electricity consumption objective and the cooling more than 1 TB. We configure a private cloud to process the data for
demand constraint with the past data. our experiments, with 16 cores of 2.6GHz CPU and a total memory
• Cooperative Relationship compares entries used in the of 64GB. We train the models with three-year data and predict
same sequence. We collect such cooperative entries in a set with one-year data, which is a common setting in time-series data
layer, where the entries may not be clearly comparable. mining [18] and multi-task learning [19].
Accordingly, we apply the Dominant Graph (DG) [17] for the Baselines. To make the COP prediction, we employ the follow-
relationship modeling, which treats the two types of relationships ing state-of-the-art models as baselines.
differentially, i.e., the dominant relationship is more important for • Initial Profiling Model (IPM) predicts the COP using the
priority decision than the cooperative one. Two entries having a initial profile of chillers under different loads.
dominant relationship are ordered and directly linked in DG. The • Thermodynamic Model (TDM) predicts the COP using
entries in the same layer can be ordered according to the number of pre-calibrated thermodynamic model. Thermodynamic mod-
cases when it is used for sequencing which meets cooling demand. els [9] capture the thermodynamic process of chillers and try
Then we decide the best priority COP tec of the entries with the to obtain the chiller COP with fixed form given the chiller
traveler algorithm in Dominant Graph [17]. 1 Note that such a loading.
historical priority of entries should not be directly applied as the • Data-driven COP Prediction Model (DPP) predicts the
current priority, due to the changing COPs and cooling demands. COP by the data-driven approach which learns the model
Finally, we obtain the historical priority r kt of the four factors with historical data samples, where DPP-Ada denotes the ap-
for all historical time instances: r kt = [COPit .r k ], ∀COPit ∈ COP tec , proach using AdaBoost Regression as learning model; DPP-
SVR denotes the approach using SVM Regression.
1 An entry can be used by multiple candidate sequences and should not be updated
repeatedly using the same model in the sequencing decision because the result will be
2 Dueto page limitations, the discussion of scoring under different cooling demands
the same. In one sequencing decision, we simply skip the update of an entry if it has
been updated already. can be found in Appendix C.
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Data driven Chiller Sequencing in Commercial Buildings e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany
Figure 12: The average Figure 13: The total time Figure 14: The run time as Figure 15: The average
electricity consumption as a function of day. a function of day. electricity consumption
of cooling demands. in multiple buildings.
7 RELATED WORK
Sequencing. That is because not all predictions on all operations Energy Intelligent Buildings is a widely studied smart-building
are necessary. Our T-DCS captures the top important operations research topic [4–6], especially for the major energy consumer of
and still maintains the superiority of data-driven techniques. HVAC system. Works include controlling the HVAC based on the
From the cooling demand point of view, Figure 12 shows the spatio-temporal profile of occupancy inside a building [4], cooling a
changes in Average Electricity Consumption under different se- building in advance of expected increase in occupancy, also known
quencing methods. We see that T-DCS is still almost the same as as pre-cooling [5], and incorporating renewables such as solar
DCS and always outperforms Predefined Sequencing, which val- panels and battery storage into the energy mix [6]. Recently, data-
idates the performance of our approach as mentioned above. For driven techniques are also introduced to capture occupant and
example, T-DCS outperforms Predefined Sequencing by 24.56% at device behavior in this research topic [4, 22–26]. In [4], rich sensor
the average cooling demand of 26205.5 kW. Consistent with our data is leveraged to predict occupancy and benefit setpoint control
intuition, as the cooling demand increases, the Average Electricity in HVAC system to save energy. Occupant feedback is also further
Consumption of DCS and T-DCS also gradually increases; while considered in [22], where a joint model was developed for feedback
Predefined Sequencing still remains steadily high due to its limited and individually comfort learning. These scenarios usually assume
prediction performance and backup chiller mechanism. the data to be sufficient for training.
Result on Time We first compare the total time of the-state-
Chiller Sequencing refers to operating the most efficient com-
of-the-art sequencing models. In Fig. 13, we compare the Total
bination of chillers in a building at (near) real-time to meet the
Time of T-DCS with that of Predefined Sequencing and DCS for
time-varying cooling demand. Previous studies mainly focused on
one year under time limitation of 2 hours. We can see that T-DCS
developing reliable and robust sequencing according to instanta-
and Predefined Sequencing operations can be completed within the
neous building cooling load [15, 27, 28]. These studies mainly set
stipulated time except for DCS. It is mainly because DCS needs to
the chiller cooling capacity as constant (i.e., the same as the rated
update all the profile tables before making a sequencing decision,
cooling capacity) [29]. Considering that the cooling capacity may
while our T-DCS only updates the most important sparse profile
vary under different operating conditions (e.g., different chiller
table, so it saves significant computation time.
evaporating and condensing temperatures), such approaches may
To show the potential of saving time, we next compare the Run
fail to provide enough cooling energy or lead to extra energy us-
Time of T-DCS with that of Predefined Sequencing and DCS for
age [30]. As a solution, first, thermal energy storage was leveraged
one year. As we can see in Fig. 14, the average computation time of
to improve the COP of multiple chiller plants [31]. Second, physical
our T-DCS model is 1.6 hours, which is an improvement of 10 times
and grey box have been used to capture the variation in maximum
over the DCS model. That is because, T-DCS uses Joint Priority
cooling capacity given different operating conditions [30, 32]. Gen-
Ordering to select the most important entries for prediction, unlike
eral model is also proposed calibrated using real data from water
DCS. Though compared with Predefined Sequencing, it seems our
plants [33–35] and centrifugal chillers [36]. However, the actual
T-DCS takes more time, but in return, we get a more accurate result
performance of these sequence control strategies is subject to the
as detailed in Section 6.1.
accuracy of these models because they are general purpose models
Result on Multiple Buildings In Fig. 15, we compare the Av-
and do not capture the practicalities that come with deployments
erage Electricity Consumption of T-DCS with that of Predefined
in different building conditions and time-varying cooling demands.
Sequencing and DCS for different buildings. As we can see, though
Worse still, when conducting data-driven sequencing, they also do
T-DCS significantly reduces the computation time, the Electricity
not consider the time limitations, e.g., minimum start-stop-start
Consumption of T-DCS is still quite close to DCS. Compared with
time of chillers. For the first time, we introduce a novel data-driven
Predefined Sequencing, T-DCS saves 20980 kWh of Electricity Con-
chiller sequencing framework that also captures the need to per-
sumption in Pacific Place I, which is an improvement of 31.42%,
form chiller sequencing under time constraints. It provides dynamic
respectively. In the remaining two buildings of Pacific Place II and
cooling performance estimation given a set of possible cooling loads,
Pacific Place III, the improvement is 31.63% and 30.98%, respectively.
other configurations and environmental settings, and conducts se-
These results highlight the generality of our approach. When it
quencing under practical time limitations.
comes to multiple buildings, our approach merely shares the similar
Time issue is always an important problem in traditional complex
training samples using multi-task learning and selects important
system research, and now may need to be re-thinked when time-
entries under similar cooling demands, thus avoiding the noise
costly machine learning introduced in decision making [37, 38],
when switching between different contexts and models.
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e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany Zimu Zheng et al.
especially on the edge of the network [39]. An example is SenseNet- Sensor Missing The sensing data required by the COP computa-
works [40], a recent U.S.-based startup company, which uses mil- tion are all accessible in our system. However, such an assumption
lions of GPS estimates sourced from mobile phones within a city to may not be true in other systems where some of the required sen-
predict the place where the people would be interested. In such a sors, e.g., mass flow rates sensors, may not be not available. In that
case, the computation time on the phone should be tackled carefully case, cooling load can be estimated indirectly by inverse physical
to meet user requirement. In practice, there are also quite a few models based on the power consumption of chiller motors, see [43].
works trying to reduce the data-driven computation time using Learning and Prediction Frequency The data samples of all
distributed machine learning [37, 41, 42]. Admittedly, by increasing operations are likely to be sparse, the prediction model should be
the total computation power, such methods work well in reducing updated frequently to adapt to the accumulated samples under
data-driven computation time. However, they can still suffer from demands, configurations and degradation overtime. To maintain
problems like higher computation cost, higher data transmission high performance of our model, in this paper, we update the pa-
and sharing cost, or even data privacy concerns. There are also rameters each time before a chiller sequencing operation. It would
methods re-designing the algorithm for speed up, most of which be interesting future work to investigate the optimal learning and
are conducted with trade-off between computation time and ac- prediction frequency in data-driven industrial operations.
curacy [38]. Our idea, in this paper, is based on the observation Multiple-time Chiller Sequencing In this paper, we focused
that not all operations are valuable for prediction. Focusing on on single-time chiller sequencing, i.e., without the consideration
electricity minimization, we show that it is possible to cut down the and cooperation of other sequencing at different times. Possible
computation time by reducing the number of less-important predic- future work can include the consideration of minimum annual run-
tion tasks, rather than sacrificing prediction accuracy or incurring time of chillers for multiple-time sequencing, or minimum chiller
high computation cost, which sheds some new light on time-aware utility for each single-time sequencing operation.
machine learning in decision making.
9 CONCLUSIONS
8 DISCUSSION Developing energy efficient buildings has long been an important
Accuracy and Energy Consumption Prediction accuracy gener- research topic as facility managers grapple with the problem of
ally affects energy consumption in our T-DCS sequencing, because reducing their building’s electricity bills. In this paper, we focused
additional operations, e.g., backup chillers, should be launched to on one of the core problems in building operation, namely HVAC
fix the problem to meet the required cooling demand. Theoretically, chiller sequencing, and made the following contributions.
it seems that using backup chiller does not necessarily lead to in- First, we demonstrated that using chiller COP values from ini-
crease in overall energy consumption, when they are used to satisfy tial profiles can be detrimental from the point of view of HVAC
the exact cooling demand. However, generally, starting additional electricity consumption. We subsequently stressed the need for
backup chillers in practice usually increases the energy consump- quantifying COP at run-time.
tion under perfect prediction due to the following reasons: 1) Using Second, we showed that predicting COP accurately is a chal-
additional chillers and pumps in general leads to more energy con- lenging problem, requiring considerable computation time and
sumption, because launching and maintaining additional chillers hardware resources. To provide a practical solution, we developed
usually takes more energy than increasing the load on already- a sequencing framework alongside a time-constrained approach
operating chillers when meeting the same cooling load. 2) Backup for COP prediction, which opens the doors for HVAC electricity
chillers are practically run in an over-provisioned manner, e.g., on consumption reduction while enabling ease of use of the scheme
the highest load, in order to ensure the required cooling demand for real-world deployment.
and avoiding further adjustment, instead of meeting exactly the Finally, we evaluated the performance of our solution by apply-
demand. Such over-provisioning leads to energy waste. ing it to BMS data, spanning 4 years, obtained from multiple chillers
However, there are also other cases when inaccurate prediction across 3 large commercial buildings in Hong Kong. We showed that
may not lead to inefficient operation. For example, as mentioned in our solution can save over 30% of HVAC electricity consumption
our paper, some operations may never be used in chiller sequencing compared to the current mode of chiller operation in the buildings.
optimization. The prediction accuracy of such unimportant opera- We believe that sequencing chillers using a data-driven approach
tions may not affect the final decision. In this paper, we accordingly for COP prediction offers a simple and effective mechanism for
propose the dominant graph techniques. It would be an interesting reducing the electricity consumption associated with operating the
future work to further investigate on the difference of data-driven HVAC in large commercial buildings.
techniques between industrial (focusing on industrial objective)
and traditional (focus on merely accuracy objective) prediction. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Chiller Type In this paper, we focus on merely water-cooled The authors would like to thank Dr. Abraham Lam and Adrian from
chillers. As for water-cooled chillers, we first take into account the Mega automation Ltd. for their valuable discussion and feedback.
inlet and outlet water temperature. We also leverage the dry-bulb Parts of the work were supported by the Hong Kong Polytechnic
temperature (DBT) which reflects the cooling demand and usage University under Grant No.: 1-BBYX, and by the School of Computer
for performance prediction on the chillers. Future work can include Science and Technology, HUST, with the National Key Research &
the feature design for different types of chillers. For example, the Development (R&D) Plan under Grant No.: 2017YFB1001703, and
DBT can also be quite related for air-cooled chillers due to their the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant
heat transfer with outdoor air. No.: 61761136014 and 61722206.
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Data driven Chiller Sequencing in Commercial Buildings e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany
APPENDIX
COP
4 4
than Independent Multi-task Learning.
2 PacificIIChiller1-Accurate 2 PacificIIChiller4-Accurate In Fig. 18, we show both the measured COP and the estimated
PacificIIChiller1-Current PacificIIChiller4-Current
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000120014001600 COP with our DPP. The results are shown for one chiller from each
Day Day
type in Pacific Place II. We see that our approach well matches the
(a) (b) value and the trend of the real COP, with an average RMSE of 0.52.
Figure 16: The accurate COP and estimated COP with We also show result with different learning models F (·) in Table 6.
present scheme on different days in Pacific Place II for two We found that the ensemble approach like AdaBoost (1) can better
types of chillers (a) Chiller 1; (b) Chiller 4. capture the non-linearity than linear regression, and (2) are less
In Fig. 17, we compare the electricity consumption between 2012 likely to become over-fitted other than support vector regression on
and 2015 for each of the two chillers. Stacked bars on the right large datasets, due to the model combination nature of AdaBoost.
indicate the current mode of operation while bars on the left show
C DISCUSSION ON PRIORITY OF FACTORS
3 Itis possible to over-provision the cooling loads by a certain degree. There is a trade-
off between over-provisioning and the fail-over for backup chillers. This problem is Priority under Different Cooling Demands. To order the en-
orthogonal to ours and we do not consider it in this paper. tries and obtain the priority, we need to decide the four priorities for
246
e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany Zimu Zheng et al.
10 10
8 8
6 6
COP
COP
4 4
2 PacificIIChiller1-DPP 2 PacificIIChiller4-DPP
PacificIIChiller1-Accurate PacificIIChiller4-Accurate
0 0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
Day Day
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Data driven Chiller Sequencing in Commercial Buildings e-Energy ’18, June 12–15, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany
Table 7: The probability to find optimal solution using dif-
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