Building Energy Management Systems -

Optimization of Comfort and Energy Use

L.A. Hurtado, Student Member, IEEE
P.H. Nguyen, Member, IEEE
W.L. Kling, Member, IEEE
Department of Electrical Engineering
Eindhoven University of Technology
Eindhoven, the Netherlands


W. Zeiler
Department of the Built Environment
Eindhoven University of Technology
Eindhoven, the Netherlands

AbstractBuilding Energy Management Systems (BEMS)
have been introduced in the built environment as a
mechanism to increase the energy efficiency while maintaining
the required comfort levels. BEMS also offers promising
flexibility for Demand Side Management and Demand
Responses (DSM&DR) to interact with Smart Grids. Through
the use of intelligent control techniques, BEMS can be
optimized to exploit the built environment flexibility while
ensuring the minimum comfort levels required by the
buildings user. This paper presents an analysis framework
for BEMS based on a state of the art literature review.
Furthermore, Simscape is introduced as a simulation tool that
can model effectively sub-systems in the BEMS.
Index TermsBuilding Energy Management Systems, Energy
Management, Multi-Agent Systems, Simscape.
I. INTRODUCTION
The electric power world has become object of constant
changes, including advanced technologies, e.g. ICT and
control, economic, e.g. market liberalization, as well as
sustainability, e.g. Renewable Energy Sources (RES),
Distributed Energy Resources (DER). As the worlds
population continues to increase, so does the energy and
electricity demand. A major part of this increase is in cities,
where buildings represent about one-third of the energy
consumed [1]. Aligned with net-zero energy objectives and
intelligent buildings concepts, Building Energy
Management Systems (BEMS) aim to increase energy
efficiency, integrate RESs while reducing the energy costs
and maintaining the user comfort levels [2] [3] [4].
Working people often spend most of their time (ca. 80%)
inside buildings [5]. Therefore, a healthy and comfortable
environment is important for the well-being and
productivity of the occupants; different studies have
demonstrated that comfort affects human productivity [6].
Building Energy Management System (BEMS) has
been object of research for number of years. The growth in
RES and DER, as well as the advances in ICT technologies
have been drivers of the research on exploiting the
flexibility of BEMS interacting with Smart Grids In order
to provide Demand Side Management (DSM). DSM has
been pointed out to help: (a) reducing the energy generation
margin, i.e. higher utilization of the electrical assets; (b)
improving the transmission and distribution grid; (c) the
demand-supply balance [7]. There are different ways to do
this, i.e. Demand Response (DR) programs (direct or
indirect load control) [8], time-of-use pricing and smart
metering. In general, DSM & DR controls the consumers,
i.e. load, from their normal consumption pattern to optimize
the energy demand.
In this paper, an analysis framework for enhancing
BEMS is presented based on a state of the art literature
review of each of the BEMSs subsystems. This framework
proposes a Multi-Agent System platform, to optimize the
building energy consumption by taking advantage of the
systems flexibility. The developed agent architecture aims
to a multi-zone environment of BEMS. The goal of this
framework is to create a guideline for the design and
implementation of BEMS with a flexible, open, distributed,
easy, and user friendly platform.
The rest of this paper is organized as follow: in section
II the literature on BEMS is presented, with a description of
the typical energy systems found in a building and the
control strategies found in the literature. Section III
presents BEMS framework proposed, with the description
of the agents functions, negotiation and coordination
methodologies, system architecture and user interface.
Section IV introduces Simscape. In this section the
potential of this tool for EMS design and simulation is
demonstrated. Finally the paper is closed with some
conclusions.
II. BUILDING ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Buildings are complex engineering systems determined
by its structure, functions, and the required installations. As
a building consists of a high number of components
differing in characteristics and operation times, BEMS
needs normally this environment to be divided into multiple
zones, e.g. office rooms, common areas, halls etc., with a
set of energy demand and control variables. Therefore, an
adequate and reliable model is necessary for each zone in a
building.
Obviously, the behaviour of the buildings users has a
direct impact on the building performance and energy use.
Hence, the BEMS needs to consider human-in-the-loop
models to interact with the user to comply with their
requirements and learn from them [2]. Furthermore, the
introduction of RES and DER requires the extension of the
This research has been performed within the project on Energy
Efficient Buildings part of the Smart Energy Regions-Brabant program
subsidized by the Province of Noord Brabant, the Netherlands.
The authors are with the Eindhoven University of Technology,
Eindhoven, 5600MB, The Netherlands (e-mail: l.a.hurtado.munoz@tue.nl;
p.nguyen.hong@tue.nl; w.l.kling@tue.nl; w.zeiler@bwk.tue.nl).

978-1-4799-3254-2/13/$31.00 IEEE
functional requirements of the BEMS, in order to manage
their integration and operation in the built environment and
the interaction with the public electric grid. The latter
enables different options for the building, e.g. DMS and
DR programs, and allows the building to help securing of
the grid, e.g. providing ancillary services. Finally, The
BEMS should be able to cope with the functional flexibility
of the building. Thus, BEMS should be (a) flexible, i.e.
capable of adapting to the physical and functional changes
of the building, (b) open, i.e. enable cooperation between
the different zones, agents and components, (c) distributed,
i.e. fault tolerant, easy maintenance, and easy system
extensions, and (d) user friendly, i.e. easy interface to non-
professional building operators and to the building user for
preference learning [5].
A. Energy systems

Fig. 1 Buildings energy sub-systems diagram.
As previously mentioned, in a building or zone, several
sub-systems can be identified including energy systems,
e.g. electrical, thermal and cooling systems; on-site
generation, e.g. photovoltaic (PV), small wind turbine
(WT); user interfaces; grid connection; communication;
and measuring infrastructure. Fig. 1 shows typical sub-
systems and function blocks of the building. The electricity
and gas networks are connected with the Energy Network
system. It is responsible for the energy supply, i.e. electrical
and thermal, of the building. The Energy Network is
connected to the building through a measuring subsystem,
which monitors and collects the net energy flow data. Fig. 1
also includes on-site generation, which provides energy to
the building. Due to the possible mismatch between on-site
generation and energy demand and their intermittent nature,
a storage subsystem is necessary. These two sub-systems
are also connected to the building through a measuring sub-
system. The thermal sub-system is in charge of providing
the energy conversion, i.e. electrical to thermal energy.
Finally, the electrical, cooling and heating load form the
Building sub-system. However, the complexity of this
diagram could be further increased by the inclusion of other
systems such as an electrical vehicle (EV) and micro-
combined heat and power units (CHP) among others.
The buildings comfort level is mostly controlled by the
heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and the
lighting systems. Thus, their control is crucial for the
BEMS to achieve energy efficiency and optimizing the
comfort levels [2]. For instance, in commercial buildings,
around 50% of the consumed energy is used for space
heating and cooling, i.e. HVAC systems. The rest is
consumed by lighting and other type of electrical devices,
which loads vary according to the function of the building
[9].
B. Control strategies
As mentioned before, buildings are complex, dynamic,
and unique systems. They are formed by different, but
interrelated zones and habited by people with different
preferences and requirements. Several control strategies are
described throughout the literature, i.e. fuzzy control, model
predictive control, adaptive control, among others [4].
However, due to the nature of buildings, distributed control
techniques are to be preferred.
One of the common ways to enable distributed control
techniques is by using Multi-Agent System (MAS) to tackle
complex problems, based on cooperation, coordination and
negotiation. A MAS is formed by a set of two or more
agents embedded in an environment, able to perceive it, and
autonomously react to changes in the environment. In the
distributed MAS platform, the control task is divided into
multiple smaller tasks that are controlled by different
software entities, so-called agents. Agents have been
defined to have the following characteristics [11]: (a)
reactivity, (b) pro-activeness, and (c) social ability. Thus,
agents are not only able to react to changes in their
environment, but they are also goal-orientated (take
initiative), and able to communicate with other agents. The
latter introduces coordination and negotiation characteristics
of agents.
In the MAS, there is not a well-defined overall goal, but
local goals for each agent. The distributed nature of MAS
ensures system openness to be able to cope with physical
and functional changes, i.e. uncertainty, by offering
flexibility from the local level. Due to the match between
the MAS technology characteristics and the BEMS design
requirements aforementioned, the MAS platform is selected
as the most appropriate approach for BEMS.
There is an extensive literature on MAS and some
examples to highlight the flexibility, extensibility and
robustness of agents can be seen in [8] [9] [10] [11] . The
applicability of MAS in BEMS has also been object of
research [2] [4] [12] [13] [14] .
III. FRAMEWORK FOR ENHANCING BEMS
In this paper, the BEMS is proposed to be based on the
MAS platform. The building is divided into zones, e.g.
floors, and local zones, e.g. rooms. Each zone is formed by
different local zones. Fig. 2 shows the proposed MAS
based BEMS. Different agents will control the environment
in the different local zones (LZ), e.g. LZ1, LZ2, etc., and
they will communicate with a zone agent to guarantee
optimal functionality and the minimum comfort levels in
the zone (floor). In one higher level, a building agent
(BEMS block in the figure) will communicate with
different zone agents, and on-site generation agent. These
agents will be further discussed in the next subsection.

Fig. 2 MAS based BEMS for large buildings.
A. Agent types
Fig. 3 shows the proposed collaborative diagram for the
MAS. The agents, their inputs and outputs are discussed
next based on this figure.

Fig. 3 Collaborative diagram of the Multi-Agent system.
Local zone agents sense and control the zones local
environment (2-11), such as a room. They communicate the
current local environment status to the local agent
administrator, and the system flexibility abilities. It receives
as input the cost of energy (3-10). The local zone is formed
by:
H-agent: monitors and controls the heating
systems at the room level.
V-agent: monitors and controls the ventilation
systems at the room level.
C-agent: monitors and controls the cooling
systems at the room level.
E-agent: monitors and controls the lighting and
electrical systems at the room level.
U-agent: monitors the occupancy levels at the
room, and determines the weight factors of the
local zone agents. Furthermore, it is responsible
for learning the user preferences profiles, user
identification and user feedback.
The Local agent administrator acts as a mediator and
policy enforcer, i.e. based on the current situation, user
preferences, and energy consumption elaborates an action
plan. It aggregates the information of the local zone agents;
it calculates the cost of energy for the local systems and
sends it to them (3-10). It asks the cost of energy, DR and
DSM obligations and gives the flexibility of the local zone
(4-9).
The Zone agent acts as an aggregator between the
different local zone agents. It calculates the energy cost for
the different zones based on the information received from
the building agent and the local administrator (8-4). It sends
the zone flexibility to the building agent and the energy
cost to the local administrator (5-9). Furthermore, it is in
charge of the zone load forecasting, which is based on
occupancy and weather forecast information.
The On-site generation agent monitors and controls the
on-site DER/RES production and storage. The agent
determines when is best to store, to sell or to use the
produced energy. It communicates the cost of on-site
generation to the Building agent, and it receives the
electricity price and energy demand (7-6). Finally, it
includes generation forecasting functions based on weather
forecasting and monitoring.
The Building agent aggregates the information from the
zone agents, acts as a building policy enforcer, and it is the
interface to public grid and building manager. It receives
the flexibility value from the zone agents and it sends back
the cost of energy (5-8). It asks for the grid electricity
prices, DR and DSM obligations (1-14). Furthermore, it
asks for the on-site generation cost and it sends the energy
demand (6-7).
Furthermore, the MAS includes Management Service
agent and a Directory Facilitator agent. The former keeps
track of the agents registered to the MAS platform.
Whereas, the latter maintains the directory of agents and
their services [8].
B. Decision making
The MAS is ruled by operation policies enforced at
different levels among different agents. An agent could use
different types of logic to exhibit intelligent behaviour, e.g.
deductive reasoning, practical reasoning, reactive
reasoning, etc. [11]. To deal with the multiple zone
environment, the BEMS could assign priority or weight
functions to each of the zones or users in these zones. For
instance, in private rooms one person can have the highest
priority, and this persons preferences will be dominant in
the room environment. However, in the common rooms, all
the occupants share equal amount of priority. Therefore, the
comfort could be the result of the negotiation between the
individual preferences. In a similar way, a hallway or toilet
could be assigned with a lower priority than an office.
C. Coordination and negotiation
Energy management and comfort systems have usually
confronting target functions. While the first aims at energy
efficiency optimization, i.e. economy behaviour, the latter
aims at optimizing the comfort levels, i.e. comfort
behaviour, which in turn could increase the energy
consumption. Therefore, agents in the BEMS need to have a
framework for cooperating, and when necessary negotiation
over conflicting goals. The strategies or policies are defined
globally and they provide the constraints that agents should
abide by.
D. Optimization problem
As previously mentioned, the mail goal of the BEMS is
to provide an acceptable comfort level while ensuring
energy efficiency. Thus, the BEMSs goal is to optimize
energy utilization in interaction with the electric grid,
subject to comfort constrains. However, in MAS, the
overall system target is divided into small goals for each of
the agents.
Equation (1) shows the mathematical formulation of
comfort for a zone (room). In (1), comfort is defined as a
function of the thermal comfort, i.e.
T
C , and air quality
comfort, i.e.
A
C . In turn, these factors are function of the
energy consumed by the systems responsible for providing
comfort: heating, i.e.
H
E , cooling, i.e.
C
E , and ventilation,
i.e.
V
E . Furthermore, disturbances in the environment are
included for both, thermal, i.e.
T
, and air quality, i.e.
A
,
comfort. These disturbances are function of the gains
through the faade and the active actions of the user, e.g.
opening windows, blinds, etc. Finally, weighting factors,
i.e.
1
w and
2
w , are included to give controllability over
each comfort parameter in a room, and to dynamically
adjust comfort to the individual preferences.

1 2
( , , , ) ( , )
T H C V T A V A
Comf wC E E E w C E = + (1)
Equation (2) shows the optimization problem defined
as a minimization task. The total building energy
consumption is conceptualized as the sum of the energy
consumed by the comfort and electrical energy systems, i.e.
Heating, Ventilation, Cooling, as well as lighting, i.e.
L
E ,
and electrical equipment, i.e.
E
E , over all zones. Here, n
represents the number of zones on a floor, and m represents
the number of floors in a building. The minimization
problem is done over , which represents an internal cost
estimated by the aggregator agents, i.e. zone administrator,
zone agent and building agent, based on the information
given by the other agents.
( )
1 1
1
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
m n
H ij V ij C ij L ij E ij
i j
E E E E E
mn
Min

= =
+ + + +

(2)
Subject to,

min
1 1
m n
overall ij ij
i j
Comfort W Comf Comfort t
= =
=

(3)

, min i i
Comf Comf t (4)

, min i i
L L (5)
( ) ( )
,
1
( ( ))
T
E E
t i i
t
E t E i
=
=

(6)
The problems constrains are given by equations (3)-(6).
These represent the comfort, light, and energy constrains.
Equation (3) is the overall comfort constraint. It establishes
that the sum of the individual zone comfort, over the
multiple zones should be at least equal to the minimum
reference overall comfort level, with
i
W as the zone weight
factor. This is defined by the flexibility value of each zone.
Equation (4) describes the individual comfort constraint.
The comfort at the zone level should be at least equal to the
minimum reference value for the zone. Equation (5) gives
the light level constraint for each zone i. Light comfort is
difficult to measure and therefore, it is included as a
constraint. Finally, equation (6) gives the energy constraint:
For the electrical systems, the energy consumed, should be
the same, meaning only time flexibility for the electrical
systems, e.g. over a period T , the total energy demand
cannot be influenced is assumed here, i.e. no load shedding.
E. System architecture

Fig. 4 System architecture.
Fig. 4 shows the system architecture. The BEMS is
divided into three levels, i.e. application, communication
and hardware layers. All the agents reside at the software
(application) level. At this level, the user interface, data-
bases management, and the BEMS in general can also be
found. The second level is the communication layer, which
is in charge of the data transport and connect the other two
layers together. The backbone network, in charge of
supporting the different sub-networks, can be defined as a
Building Area Network, connected which higher
communication networks through a gateway, and
implemented based on wired or wireless technologies or
combination of them.
The metering devices, sensor, and actuators are found at
the hardware (device) level. They are in direct contact with
the environment. These are: (a) sensors for occupancy,
internal and external illumination, internal and external
temperature, air quality, (b) actuators for heating, lighting,
cooling and ventilation and (c) reliable means to identifying
users. Wireless sensors and actuators networks (WSANs)
can be used in existing buildings or when the use of wired
networks is not possible. Therefore, wireless technologies
and communication protocols with low data rates, low
power consumption and simple communication are
required.
IV. SIMULATION TOOL
This section presents a first investigation of using
Simscape for modelling a zone (room) that can be extended
further for the whole BEMS system. Simscape is a
simulation tool of Matlab/Simulink, that allows the
modelling and simulation of electrical and heating systems,
and the interrelation of them.
On the one hand, Simulink allows the mathematical
modelling of a system, for instance, the thermal response of
a room. It can be approximated by a lumped system with a
thermal time constant
c
t and
0
0
( ) 20 T t C = as described in
equation (7).

( ) 1
[ ( )]
out
c
dT t
T T t
dt t
= (7)
Where,

2
10 sin
24 * 3600
t
T
out

=



(8)
On the other hand, Simscape allows the physical
modelling of a room by the use of bidirectional
components, e.g. thermal mass, convective heat transfer,
and conductive heat transfer. Through each of these
elements, a physical signal flows, i.e. heat, producing a
corresponding physical signal across the element, i.e.
temperature. Fig. 5 shows the model used in Simscape.
This corresponds to the interaction of a wall system, a
window system and a roof system as shown in the figure.
The heat transfer mechanisms are simplified to convective
and conductive heat transfer between the different thermal
nodes.

Fig. 5 Thermal model of a room in Simscape.
The system response can be seen in the Fig. 6. The
difference in the behaviour of the two systems is due to a
more detailed model used in Simscape.


Fig. 6 Temperature response of a room. Comparison between the solution
obtained by Simulink and Simscape.
Fig. 7 shows the block diagram of the model used in
Simscape. It models the behaviour of a room to the
temperature variations in the outside. In order to maintain a
predefined thermal comfort level, i.e. indoor temperature, a
heater system is used. This system has two outputs: (a) heat
supply and (b) energy consumption. Additionally, the
system includes an electrical systems block. This block has
two outputs: (a) energy consumption and (b) heat waste.

Fig. 7 Room system model.
The output of the system is the indoor room temperature
which reflects partly the energy consumption required to
sustain the comfort level in energy management. A custom
block was made in Simscape to accomplish the
interconnection of the electrical and thermal systems. It
models a resistive load, with a heat output. An extra port
allows the use of an on/off profile, i.e. it indicates whether
the load is being used or not. Furthermore, the electrical
efficiency determines the amount of heat waste generated
by the load. This heat output is then used as an input for the
thermal system. However, the function of the electrical
loads is not to supply heat for the thermal comfort.
Therefore, heat pump is used to supply the required heat to
sustain a temperature between 23 and 18 C. Fig. 8 shows
the temperature response and energy cost of the room
system. In order to better appreciate the contribution of the
electrical system, i.e. heat waste, the thermal output
power of the electrical system was exaggerated. In this
figure, it can be seen that, there is in fact a contribution of
the electrical system to the heating system. Thus, reducing
the energy cost of the systems (bottom graph in the figure).


Fig. 8 Temperature response and energy cost of the system.
Introducing some energy management features, i.e. time
based operation of the heating system, the flexibility of the
system is exploited. Fig. 9 shows the temperature response
of the system to the simple energy management restriction.
In this case, the setting points for the heating systems were
relaxed if the room was not being used (operation time
between 7am and 7pm). The outdoor conditions were
simulated as half period sinusoidal signal with amplitude of
10 degrees through a year (365 days) with half period
sinusoidal through 24hr, also with 10 degrees amplitude.
This resulted in a temperature low for the first and last parts
of the year (winter) of -20C, and a summer peak of 20C.
0 5 10 15 20 25
-10
0
10
20
Temperature response of a room
Time [hours]
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
u
r
e

[
d
e
g

C
]


temp outside
temp inside - simscape model
temp inside - lumped system
0 5 10 15 20 25
-10
0
10
20
30
Temperature response of a room
Time [hours]
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
u
r
e

[
d
e
g

C
]


temp outside
temp inside - no heat waste
temp inside - heat waste
0 5 10 15 20 25
0
50
100
150
Energy consumpton
Time [hours]
E
n
e
r
g
y

[
k
W
h
r
]


Energy consumption without heat contribution
Energy Consumption with heat contribution

Fig. 9 Temperature response of a room in a cold day (upper figure) and in
a hot day (bottom figure).
In the figure, it can be seen that the indoor temperature
is allowed to drop after 7pm, when the room is not being
used. The difference between a cold and hot day is also
shown. During a hot day, the effort (i.e. energy
consumption) of the heat pump is lower (lower number of
operating cycles), compared to the cold day operation.
The simple operation restriction imposed on the system
results in a lower energy cost, as it can be seen in Fig. 10.
Further, energy cost reduction can be achieved by a more
sophisticated energy management system, which exploits
the flexibility offered by the electrical systems.

Fig. 10 Energy consumption with and without Energy Management (EM)
in a year.
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a MAS based BEMS was discussed to
tackle the energy management challenge at the building
level. Buildings were discussed as complex, multi-zone
system which requires a distributed control strategy. This
strategy should not only be flexible, but also open,
distributed and user friendly. In this way, the BEMS can
cope with the constant changes and add-ons in the building.
The MAS-BEMS framework was presented, with a
specification of the agents required to ensure energy
optimization as well as minimum acceptable comfort
levels. This is done in a bottom-up approach, starting by the
local targets and building up to the global and general
goals. This ensures that the system is flexible, adaptable
and extendable, which copes with the dynamics of the
building. Furthermore, it places the user in the centre of the
problem, giving him control over the local environment.
Finally, Simscape was introduced as a potential tool for
the analysis and design of BEMS. By the use of a simple
room model, the interaction between the electrical energy
systems and the comfort system is shown and the effects of
simple energy management tools. This Matlab toolbox
offers a block representation of the heat transfer
mechanisms, which allows working with deep knowledge
of the transport phenomena and thermal modelling.
Furthermore, by being part of the Simulink environment,
the normal Matlab/Simulink analysis and design tools are
available, allowing treating the data as best suited.
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Conference in Fukui, Fukui, Japan, 2003.

0 5 10 15 20 25
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
Temperature response of a room in a cold day
Time [hours]
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
u
r
e

[
d
e
g

C
]


temp outside
temp inside - Energy management
temp inside - no Energy Management
0 5 10 15 20
0
5
10
15
20
25
Temperature response of a room in a hot day
Time [hours]
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
u
r
e

[
d
e
g

C
]


temp outside
temp inside - Energy management
temp inside - no Energy Management
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
x 10
4
Energy consumption
Time [months]
E
n
e
r
g
y

[
k
W
h
r
]


Energy consumption with EM
Energy Consumption without EM