Applied Energy 288 (2021) 116648

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Experiment study of machine-learning-based approximate model predictive

control for energy-efficient building control
Shiyu Yang a, b, Man Pun Wan a, *, Wanyu Chen a, Bing Feng Ng a, Swapnil Dubey b
a
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore
b
Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637553, Singapore

H I G H L I G H T S

• Proposed an approximate model predictive control for building energy management.

• The proposed control is based on a dynamic feedback machine learning model.
• The proposed control is experimentally implemented in two test buildings.
• The proposed control achieves up to 52% reduction of cooling energy.
• The proposed control is more than 100% faster than common model predictive control.

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The adoption of model predictive control (MPC) for building automation and control applications is challenged
Model Predictive Control (MPC) by the high hardware and software requirements to solve its optimization problem. This study proposes an
Machine-learning (ML) approximate MPC that mimics the dynamic behaviours of MPC using the recurrent neural network with a
Recurrent Neural Network (RNN)
structure of nonlinear autoregressive network with exogenous inputs. The approximate MPC is developed by
Air Conditioning and Mechanical Ventilation
(ACMV)
learning from the measured operation data of buildings controlled by MPC, therefore it can produce MPC-like
control for buildings without needing to solve the optimization problem, significantly reducing the computa­
tion load as compared to MPC. The proposed approximate MPC is implemented in two testbeds, an office and a
lecture theatre, to control the air-conditioning systems. The control performance of the approximate MPC is
compared to MPC as well as the original reactive control of the two testbeds. The approximate MPC retained
most of the energy and thermal comfort performance of MPC in both testbeds. For the office, the MPC and
approximate MPC reduced 58.5% and 51.6% of cooling energy consumption, respectively, as compared to the
original control. For the lecture theatre, the MPC and approximate MPC reduced 36.7% and 36.2% of cooling
energy consumption, respectively, as compared to the original control. Meanwhile, both approximate MPC and
MPC significantly improved indoor thermal comfort in the two testbeds as compared to their original control.
Despite having minor degradation in control performance the approximate MPC was more than 100 times faster
than MPC in generating optimal control commands in each time step.

can significantly improve building energy efficiency as suggested by

many studies [45] and one of the most promising control techniques is
1. Introduction
model predictive control (MPC) [6]. MPC could make use of a model of
the controlled building and takes weather conditions (e.g., air temper­
Buildings are responsible for 30% of global final energy consumption
ature, humidity, and solar radiation), internal heat loads (e.g., heat loads
[1] and more than 50% of building energy is consumed by heating,
from occupancy, equipment and lighting) and constraints (e.g.,
ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems [2]. In tropical
comfortable ranges of indoor conditions and cooling capacity of HVAC/
countries, air-conditioning and mechanical ventilation (ACMV) systems
ACMV systems) into consideration for forward prediction and optimi­
also account for most, up to 70%, of the energy consumption in buildings
zation of building operation [7]. MPC has been demonstrated capable of
[3]. Using advanced control strategies for HAVC/ACMV management

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: mpwan@ntu.edu.sg (M.P. Wan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2021.116648
Received 3 November 2020; Received in revised form 14 January 2021; Accepted 28 January 2021
Available online 22 February 2021
0306-2619/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Yang et al. Applied Energy 288 (2021) 116648

Nomenclature Symbols
PMV
̂ Normalized PMV
Abbreviations
Q
̂ Normalized Cooling Power
ACMV Air-Conditioning and Mechanical Ventilation ṁ Mass flow rate (kg/s)
AHU Air-Handling Unit
C Specific heat capacity (J/(K kg))
ANN Artificial Neural Network f() Function
ARX AutoRegressive network with eXogenous inputs
hod Hour of day
BAC Building Automation and Control J Objective
BMS Building Management System
N Prediction Horizon
CART Classification and Regression Trees n Number
COP Coefficient Of Performance
os Operation status (1 – on, 0 - off)
DDC Direct Digital Control Q heat flow rate (W)
FCU Fan Coil Unit
RH RH (%)
GLM Generalized Linear Model T Temperature (K)
HVAC Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning
u Input
LED Light-Emitting Diode W Weighting factor
LM Levenberg-Marquardt
y Output
LT Lecture Theatre ε Slack Variable
ML Machine Learning
MPC Model Predictive Control Subscripts
NARX Nonlinear AutoRegressive Network with eXogenous inputs AHU AHU
NTU Nanyang Technological University c cooling
PID Proportional–Integral–Derivative cw Chilled water
PLC Programmable Logic Controller cwr Chilled water return
PMV Predicted Mean Vote cws Chilled water supply
RC Resistance-Capacitance g Globe
RH Relative Humidity k Index variable
RNN Recurrent Neural Network o Outdoor
RT Regression Trees occ Occupancy
RTP Research Techno Plaza PMV PMV
SVM Support Vector Machine sa Supply air
TNDD Time-Delay Neural Networks t Time
VAV Variable Air Volume VAV VAV
VSD Variable Speed Drive z Zone

achieving substantial energy savings and significantly improved human
comfort for buildings, as compared to conventional reactive control (e.
g., proportional–integral–derivative (PID)), in numerous previous
studies [8].
However, several technical challenges are still limiting MPC from
wider adoption for building automation and control (BAC) [9]. One key
challenge is that the optimization problem of MPC is computationally
expensive to solve [10], making it prohibitive to implement MPC
through typical industrial controllers, such as programmable logic
controller (PLC) or direct digital controller (DDC), for real-time building
control and optimization applications [11]. Much effort has been made
to reduce the computation load of MPC, especially on the development
of simplified, usually linear, building models [1213] for computational
efficiency. Bianchini et al. [14] developed a linear building thermal
model based on AutoRegressive network with eXogenous inputs (ARX)
and trained the model using the simulation data of a detailed building
model. The linear building model was used to develop a MPC for con­
trolling heating systems. Hazyuk et al. [15] developed a low-order
building thermal model by thermal resistance–capacitance (RC)
network with parameters identified using the simulation data of a
detailed building model. The low-order building thermal model was
used to construct a MPC controller for a heating system to optimize
indoor thermal comfort and heating energy consumption [16]. Picard
et al. [17] converted a high-order building model into reduced-order
models using the balanced truncation method for constructing MPC
for a heating system. Their simulations show that MPC using reduced-
order models requires much less computational effort compared to
using a high-order building model. Yang et al. [18] developed a linear
state-space building model for MPC, which was implemented in an office
[19] and a lecture theatre [20] for real-time building optimization and
control. However, the simplified building models still need to retain a
certain complexity (e.g., one state to represent one room) to capture the
dynamics of every room. Therefore, despite the adoption of the simpli­
fied building modelling approach, MPC is still computationally expen­
sive for large buildings with many rooms.
Another major hurdle for MPC adoption is that MPC requires so­
phisticated optimization tools/libraries to solve the optimization prob­
lem [11]. These tools/libraries are usually programmed in high-level
languages (e.g., Python or MATLAB) and are not supported by most
current BAC hardware and software [21]. One possible solution to
overcome these two challenges is to approximate the control laws of
MPC by learning from the operation data of a building when it is
controlled by MPC using machine learning (ML) techniques such as
artificial neural network (ANN). The approximate MPC control laws (or
‘Approximate MPC’) is essentially a data-driven model approximating
the correlations between the input and output variables of MPC. Thus,
approximate MPC using ML learning methods (e.g., ANN) could be
explicitly written in mathematical expressions that could be easily
implemented in industrial low-power control hardware (e.g., PLC or
DDC) and low-level programming languages (e.g., structured text).
Some previous studies applied ML or statistical models on the
operation data to identify decision rules from MPC controllers to
develop approximate MPC controllers, which were subsequently used to
replace the original MPC controllers for building control. May-
Ostendorp et al. [2223] used various data mining techniques
including generalized linear model (GLM), classification and regression

2
S. Yang et al.
trees (CART) and adaptive boosting to identify decision rules from the
simulated operation data of a MPC-controlled window. They applied the
similar technique to identified decision rules of a MPC-controlled water
pump in a cooling system [24]. Domahidi et al. [25] used the adaptive
boosting method to identify decision rules from the simulated operation
data of a MPC-controlled HVAC system. Le et al. [26] used the support
vector machine (SVM) method to identify decision rules from simulated
operation data of a MPC-controlled window blind. The identified control
rules were programmed into simplified controllers to replace the orig­
inal MPC controllers in these studies. Despite having demonstrated the
feasibility of approximate MPC, these previous attempts make use of
decision rules that only generate control commands in a discrete deci­
sion space (e.g., choosing between on/off, open/closed or from a
discrete set of values), missing the essential continuous control behavior
(choosing from a continuous decision space) of MPC [27] for controlling
modulating actuators (e.g., water valves, water pumps and fans) of
HVAC/ACMV systems.
A few simulation studies investigated the direct approximation of the
continuous control laws of MPC using ML or statistical modelling for
BAC applications. Klauco et al. [28] developed an approximate MPC
controller by employing regression trees (RT) for controlling an HVAC
system. Žáčeková et al. [29] developed an approximate MPC using
nonlinear regression for controlling an HVAC system. Robillart et al.
[30] developed an approximate MPC controller using beta regression for
controlling a heating system to shift the heating load. Drgoňa et al. [31]
developed a few approximate MPC controllers by using the time-delay
neural networks (TDNN) and RT for controlling an HVAC system.
These studies have demonstrated the feasibility of approximate MPC to
mimic the continuous control behavior of MPC. However, the main
research gap of these previous studies is that they only focused on using
feed-forward ML/statistical models to develop approximate MPC. Thus,
approximate MPC employing feedback model, which is superior to feed-
forward ML/statistical models in capturing dynamic behaviors [32], is
rarely studied for BAC applications. Experimental evidence to support
the feasibility and performance of approximate MPC is also lacking in
the literature.
To fill these research gaps, this study proposes an approximate MPC
system that approximates the continuous control laws of a MPC for
optimizing building energy efficiency and thermal comfort. The pro­
posed approximate MPC features a dynamic feedback ML model, a
recurrent neural network (RNN) with a Nonlinear AutoRegressive
network with eXogenous inputs (NARX) structure, which forms the main
novelty of this study. The control performance of the proposed
approximate MPC system was investigated experimentally. Two
approximate MPC controllers were developed and experimentally
implemented for real-time control of the ACMV systems in an office
testbed and a lecture theatre (LT) testbed. The building operation data
used to train the approximate MPC controllers were obtained from
measurements made in the two testbeds when they were controlled by
the MPC controllers developed in a previous study [33]. The control
performance of the approximate MPC, in terms of energy efficiency and
indoor thermal comfort, was evaluated and compared to the original
Fig. 1. An overview of the methodology used to develop the approximate MPC and performance evaluation.
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Applied Energy 288 (2021) 116648
MPC.
2. Methodology
2.1. Overview
Fig. 1 shows an overview of the methodology used in this study. It
starts with having a MPC controller (consisting of a building model and
optimization algorithm) to control the testbed building for a period of
time. Building operation data collected during this period are to be used
as the input/output data for training the approximate MPC controller.
The input data are the input variables of the MPC controller, including
the measured disturbances (e.g., weather and internal heat loads) and
room conditions (e.g., PMV, air temperature, globe temperature and
humidity). The output data include the cooling power set point of the
ACMV system, which is the control command generated by the MPC
controller. The approximate MPC controller is based on the NARX RNN,
a dynamic feedback ML model that approximates the dynamic correla­
tions between the input variables and the control command of the MPC
controller. Thus, the approximate MPC controller can perform MPC-like
control of a building with reference to the measured disturbances, room
conditions and the control command at the last time step, without
needing to solve the optimization problem. The approximate MPC
controllers are then implemented in the testbed building to take over the
control from the original MPC controllers. Control performance of the
approximate MPC controllers in the testbed building is experimentally
evaluated and compared against the original MPC controllers.
2.2. Testbeds
Experiments were conducted in two testbeds including (1) an office
at level 3 of the Research Techno Plaza building representing typical
commercial built environments with moderate occupancy load and (2) a
lecture theatre (LT) on the campus of Nanyang Technological University
(NTU) in Singapore representing high-heat-load built environments
with heavy, high-dynamic occupancy.
2.2.1. Office testbed
Fig. 2 shows the internal layout and setup of the office testbed (or
‘the office’). The office is surrounded by adjacent air-conditioned spaces
including other offices, a corridor and an atrium, thus, the weather does
not affect the internal thermal conditions of the office through the fa­
cades. The floor area of the office is 46 m2 and the floor-to-ceiling height
is 3 m. The major internal heat gains of the office are from the occupants,
computers and light-emitting diode (LED) lighting fixtures. Conditioned
air from a fan coil unit (FCU), which also serves a few adjacent spaces, is
supplied into the office through a variable air volume (VAV) box, which
has a maximum airflow capacity of 1,320 m3/h. The VAV box supplies
the conditioned air through three 4-way diffusers as shown in Fig. 2. The
VAV box is originally controlled by a thermostat, which regulates the
supply air flowrate through an air damper according to a room air
temperature set point of 23 ◦ C. The ACMV system of the office operates
S. Yang et al.
Fig. 2. Internal layout and setup of the office [33].
during 8 am – 6 pm of workdays and is switched off for the rest of the
time.
For the implementation of MPC and approximate MPC, the office is
installed with additional sensors including a combined temperature-RH
(relative humidity) sensor and a thermal comfort measurement device,
which measures air velocity, temperature, RH and globe temperature for
evaluation of predicted mean vote (PMV) index [34]. Occupant’s
metabolic rate and clothing level are assumed to be constant at 1.2 met
and 0.57 clo in PMV calculation, according to the typical activity level
and clothing of the occupants in the office. Another combined
temperature-RH sensor and an airflow sensor are installed in the supply
air duct leading to the VAV box to measure the conditions of the supply
air. Sensible cooling power supplied to the office through the VAV box at
any given point of time is calculated based on the measured difference in
supply air and room air temperatures as well as the measured supply air
flowrate. More details of the office, its ACMV system and instrumenta­
tion are described by Yang et al. [33].
Fig. 3. A schematic diagram of the ACMV system serving LT [33].
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2.2.2. Lecture theatre testbed
The LT testbed (or ‘LT’) has a seating capacity of 240 and a floor area
of 255 m2. The major internal loads are the heat gains from the occu­
pants and internal lighting. The whole room space is considered as one
thermal zone, which is air-conditioned by an air-handling unit (AHU)
that consists of a cooling coil and a variable speed drive (VSD) fan as
shown in Fig. 3. The airflow volume capacity of the AHU is 14,882 m3/h.
Chilled water is supplied from a central chiller plant that serves the
cluster of buildings where LT is located. The original building man­
agement system (BMS) of LT regulates the fan speed according to the
room air temperature set point of 24 ◦ C and the opening of the chilled
water valve (WV) according to a varying supply air temperature set
point, as described in Yang et al. [20]. When the control is switched to
MPC, the AHU fan speed is regulated according to a supply air tem­
perature set point of 15 ◦ C and the chilled water valve is regulated to
chase the cooling power set points generated by the MPC controller. The
approximate MPC controller shares the similar control approach as the
S. Yang et al.
MPC controller with the exception that the cooling power set point is
generated by the approximate MPC algorithm instead of the MPC
algorithm.
For the implementation of MPC and approximate MPC, additional
sensors are installed in LT, as shown in Fig. 3, for measuring indoor and
outdoor conditions as well as ACMV variables. The indoor thermal
comfort is measured by the PMV index which is determined from the
measured globe temperature, air temperature, air velocity and RH by
sensors mounted at the seat near the middle of LT. Occupant’s metabolic
rate and clothing level are assumed to be constant at 1.2 met and 0.5 clo,
respectively, according to the activity levels and clothing of the occu­
pants in LT. Cooling power provided to LT at any point of time is
measured by a thermal energy meter installed across the AHU cooling
coil, measuring the chilled water mass flowrate, chilled water supply
and return temperatures. The fan power is measured by an electric
power meter. The occupancy level in LT is estimated based on the
steady-state CO2 balance [35] in LT using the measured CO2 concen­
trations in supply air and return air. More details of LT, ACMV system
and instrumentation are described by Yang et al. [2033].
2.3. MPC**a
MPC controllers developed in a previous study [33] are employed as
the state-of-art ‘teacher’ for the approximate MPC controllers developed
in this study. Instead of chasing a set point air temperature as the
original thermostat control does in the office or the original BMS does in
LT, the objectives of the MPC are, instead, to minimize cooling energy
consumption and deviation of indoor PMV from thermal neutrality
(PMV = 0), as shown by the cost function described by Eq. (1).
( )
∑ N ∑
N ( ) scheme. By ‘learning’ from the MPC as described in Section 2.3, the
J = Minimize ̂2
Q + [WPMV
̂
PMV t+k|t ] 2
+ W ε
ε t+k|t (1)
c,t+k|t
k=1 k=1
where symbols J, Q, ̂ PMV,
̂ W, N, and ε refer to objective, normalized
cooling power, normalized PMV, weighting factor, prediction horizon,
and slack variable. Subscript k, t, c and PMV refer to index variable, time,
cooling and PMV. Normalized cooling power is the ratio of instanta­
neous cooling power to the cooling capacity of the ACMV system.
Normalized PMV is the ratio of the instantaneous PMV to the magnitude
of the comfortable PMV range (-0.5 ≤ PMV ≤ 0.5) [36]. Particularly, the
three terms on the right-hand side of Eq. (1) refer to costs of cooling
energy consumption, thermal discomfort and violation of constraints
within the prediction horizon, respectively. WPMV is the weighting factor
for indoor PMV to allow for tuning the relative weighting between
thermal comfort (second term) and cooling energy consumption (first
term) in the cost function. In this study, WPMV is set at 4, whereas the
weighting factor for the cooling energy consumption is 1. This setting
prioritizes indoor PMV close to thermal neutrality (PMV = 0) over
minimizing the cooling energy. Wε is the weighting factor for the cost of
constraint violations (third term) and its value is set at 10000. With this
setting, any violation of constraints would make this term much larger
than the first two terms, i.e., very small tolerance to constraint violation
[33].
The optimization problem described by Eq. (1) is constrained by the
comfortable range of indoor PMV (− 0.5 ≤ PMV ≤ 0.5) [36] and the
cooling capacity of the ACMV systems. The control interval of the MPC is
5 min and the prediction horizon is 12-control-interval long. The pre­
diction horizon is selected based on the response time of indoor thermal
conditions in the two testbeds. During the morning start-up of ACMV in
both testbeds, it takes maximum 40 min for the indoor PMV to reach and
stablise at the best thermal comfort [33], suggesting that 40 min would
be enough to cover the response time of the indoor thermal conditions
for the two testbeds. The selected prediction horizon of 12 control in­
tervals (60 min) is long enough to cover the response time for optimizing
building future response. Setting a too much longer prediction horizon
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Applied Energy 288 (2021) 116648
will unnecessarily increase the computation load in solving the opti­
mization problem of MPC [37]. The output variable (manipulated var­
iable) from the MPC is the optimal cooling power set point for the ACMV
systems, i.e., the VAV box in the office or the AHU in LT. The input
variables of the MPC include measured disturbances, feedback of
measured states as well as feedback of the measured manipulated vari­
able. More details of the MPC could be found in the previous study [33].
A MPC system was developed and implemented in both testbeds
previously [33]. To obtain training data (input/output) for later devel­
opment of approximate MPC, the MPC system controlled the VAV box in
the office for 20 workdays (February 2019 – March 2019) and controlled
the AHU for 10 days with classes (9th – 15th September 2019 and 23rd –
29th September 2019). Building operation data were recorded at 5-min­
ute intervals. Further details of the MPC system and the experimental
implementation in the two testbeds can be found in Yang et al. [33].
2.4. Approximate MPC system
The proposed approximate MPC system consists of an approximate
MPC controller and a local controller as illustrated in Fig. 4. With the
same measured input variables of MPC as described in Section 2.3
including measured disturbances (e.g., weather conditions and internal
heat loads), feedbacks of measured states (e.g., PMV, air temperature,
globe temperature, humidity), as well as the feedback of measured
manipulated variable (cooling power set point), the approximate MPC
controller generates a near-optimal cooling power set point for the next
time step and sends to the local controller. The local controller, which is
the same as the one in the MPC system [33], chases the cooling power set
point received by regulating the actuators of the ACMV systems (air
damper in VAV box or chilled water valve WV in AHU) based on the PID
approximate MPC follows the objectives of the MPC implicitly, which
are to minimize cooling energy consumption and minimize the deviation
of indoor PMV from thermal neutrality.
The approximate MPC is essentially a ML model that can predict
MPC-like control commands (cooling power set point for ACMV) based
on the same input variables of MPC. In this study, the RNN with NARX
structure, as expressed by Eq. (2), is employed to approximate the dy­
namic behaviors of MPC for developing a ML model to work as the
approximate MPC. The NARX RNN is a dynamic network that is suitable
for time-series predictions [3839] and, thus, suitable for approximating
dynamic behaviors. The sigmoidal activation function, commonly used
for ANN [40], was employed in this study.
( )
yt = f yt− 1 , yt− 2 , ⋯yt− ny , ut− 1 , ut− 2 , ⋯ut− nu (2)
where symbols f(), y, u, t and n refer to function, output, input, time
and number.
The NARX RNN was trained using the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM)
algorithm in MATLAB deep learning toolbox [41] and the building
operation data measured during MPC control, as described in Section
2.3. One hidden layer is selected for the NARX RNN, which can provide
sufficient performance for most modelling problems [42] and avoid the
possibility of overfitting due to having too many hidden layers [43]. The
number of neurons in the hidden layer was determined by a ‘trial-and-
error’ method [44]. Multiple trials of RNN training are performed
starting from a small hidden layer size (number of neurons) to a point
that training errors cannot be reduced further by enlarging the hidden
layer size. This final hidden layer size is used for the NARX RNN, which
becomes the approximate MPC controller. The same configuration of
NARX RNN (except for the hidden layer sizes and the input variables) is
used for both the office and LT testbeds to approximate the control laws
of their respective MPC controllers. The hidden layer size of NARX RNN
for each testbed is determined based on the above-described ‘trial-and-
error’ method. The input variables of the MPC controllers of the two
testbeds are different due to the difference in the internal setup (e.g., the
S. Yang et al.
Fig. 4. A schematic diagram showing the architecture of the proposed approximate MPC system.
number of occupants in LT is much more dynamic than the office) and
structure (e.g., LT is exposed to the outdoor environment while the office
is not) of the two testbeds. Details of the input/output variables of the
NARX RNNs for the two testbeds are given below in Section 2.4.1 and
2.4.2.
2.4.1. Approximate MPC controller for the office
The approximate MPC controller (NARX RNN model) for the office,
trained with the measured operation data obtained when the office was
controlled by MPC, is illustrated in Fig. 5. The input data include hour of
day (hod) obtained from the CPU timer of the control server, operation
status (os) of the ACMV system obtained from the ACMV schedule,
measured room air RH (RHz) and measured room air temperature (Tz),
as listed in Table 1. Some disturbances are unmeasured as they could be
represented by other measured disturbances or have relatively small
effects on room conditions as compared to other measured disturbances,
reducing instrumentation requirement and computational complexity of
MPC. The disturbances of internal loads are unmeasured and are rep­
resented by the measured disturbance os (ACMV is on when os is 1 and
ACMV is off when os is 0) by assuming that the temporal variation of
internal loads during a day follows the ACMV operation schedule (in­
ternal loads are at 0% when ACMV is off, internal loads are at 100%
when ACMV is on). The thermal conditions (room air temperature and
humidity) in the adjacent spaces are treated as unmeasured disturbances
as the adjacent spaces are also air-conditioned. Hence, the difference of
the thermal conditions between the adjacent spaces and the office is
expected to be small. Heat transfer between the office and the outdoors
through the building envelope was not considered as the office is not
directly exposed to the outdoor environment. The output data are the
cooling power set point (Qc) generated by the MPC for the VAV box. The
sensible cooling power of the VAV box in the office is defined as,
Qc,VAV = ṁsa Csa (Tz − Tsa ), (3)
where ṁ, C, Q and T refer to mass flow rate (kg/s), specific heat capacity
(J/(K kg)), heat flow rate (W) and temperature (K), respectively. Sub­
scripts c, sa, VAV, and z refer to cooling, supply air, VAV box and thermal
zone, respectively. The supply air mass flow rate, thermal zone air
Fig. 5. Schematic diagram of the approximate MPC controller for the office.
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Applied Energy 288 (2021) 116648
Table 1
Listed of input/output data measured from the office for training the approxi­
mate MPC controller.
Variables Description Variable type in MPC
Qc,VAV Cooling power set point for the VAV box Manipulated variable
hod Hour of day Measured disturbance
os ACMV operation status
RHz Room air RH
Tz Room air temperature Measured state variable
temperature (representing return air temperature) and supply air tem­
perature were measured using the instrumentation described in Section
2.2.1.
The input/output data set collected, as described in Section 2.3, was
divided into three subsets randomly picked across the data collection
period, 70% for model training, 15% for model validation and the
remaining 15% for testing. 20 neurons of the hidden layer are selected
for the approximate MPC controller based on the above-mentioned
‘trial-and-error’ method. The R-values of training, validation and
testing phases are 0.993, 0.991 and 0.992, respectively, which indicate
that the trained approximated MPC controller has high prediction ac­
curacy in mimicking the behaviors of the MPC controller for predicting
cooling power set point. The R-values of the validation and testing
phases are very similar to that of the training phase, suggesting no
obvious overfitting to the training data.
2.4.2. Approximate MPC controller for LT
Fig. 6 shows the schematic diagram of the approximate MPC
controller for LT. The input data include ACMV operation status (os),
measured outdoor air temperature (To), measured outdoor air RH (RHo),
estimated number of occupants (nocc), measured room air temperature
(Tz), measured room air RH (RHz) and measured room globe tempera­
ture (Tg) as listed in Table 2. Besides the number of occupants, which is
highly dynamic in LT and is estimated based on measured CO2 con­
centrations in supply air and return air as described in Section 2.2.2, the
other internal heat load due to lighting power is treated as unmeasured
disturbance and represented by os with the same consideration for that
Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of the approximate MPC controller for LT.
S. Yang et al. Applied Energy 288 (2021) 116648

Table 2 Thermostat/BMS cases using the measured data from the two testbeds.
List of the input/output data measured from LT for training the approximate The test results were measured at 5-minute intervals from the two
MPC controller. testbeds. The statistical distributions of indoor PMV are plotted and
Variables Description Variable type in MPC analyzed to evaluate the thermal comfort performance of the three cases
Qc,AHU Cooling power set point for AHU Manipulated variable
for each testbed. The energy performance of the three cases in the office
os ACMV operation status Measured disturbance testbed is compared using the measured cooling power of the VAV box.
To Outdoor air temperature The energy performance of the three cases in LT is compared using the
RHo Outdoor air RH measured energy consumption (cooling energy + supply fan electricity)
nocc Number of occupants
of the AHU.
Tz Room air temperature Measured state variable
RHz Room air RH
Tg Room globe temperature 3.1. Test results in the office

Fig. 7 shows the time series of measured indoor PMV and room air
of the office as described in Section 2.2.1. The thermal conditions in temperature of the three cases during office hours of the test period (20
adjacent spaces are also considered as unmeasured disturbances with days per case). The results include the median value and interquartile
the same consideration for that of the office. The heat load from outdoor range of these time-series to show control characteristics and the fluc­
solar radiation is not considered as LT is located within shading [20]. tuation of indoor conditions of different controllers. The room air tem­
The output data is the cooling power set point (Qc) generated by the MPC perature is measured by the combined temperature-RH sensor and the
controller for the AHU. The cooling power of the AHU in the office is indoor PMV is measured by the thermal comfort measurement device
defined as, with globe temperature, air velocity and combined temperature-RH
Qc,AHU = ṁcw Ccw (Tcwr − Tcws ) (4) sensors, as shown in Fig. 2. Fig. 7 (a) & (d) show that the original
thermostat overcooled the office during the morning start-up period (8
where subscripts AHU, cw, cws and cwr refer to AHU, chilled water, am – 9:30 am). This can be attributed to the reactive nature of the
chilled water supply and chilled water return. thermostat’s control logic control that overshot the room air tempera­
The input/output data set collected, as described in Section 2.3, in LT ture set point (23 ◦ C) as it was trying to cool down the room during
was also divided into three subsets in the same way as that did for the morning start-up. The morning overshoot issue was eliminated with the
office. 20 neurons of the hidden layer were selected for the approximate MPC, with its prediction and optimization capabilities, which cooled the
MPC controller based on the above-mentioned ‘trial-and-error’ method. room air temperature to near thermal neutrality and stayed around there
The R-values of training, validation and testing phases are 0.998, 0.997 for the rest of the day, as shown in Fig. 7 (b) & (e). Instead of chasing a
and 0.998, respectively. The consistency of R-values of the three phases set point reactively as the thermostat did, MPC proactively predicted the
is, again, suggesting no obvious overfitting to the training data. future indoor PMV using the built-in building model and sequentially
optimized indoor thermal comfort (minimizing the deviation of indoor
2.5. Experimental arrangements PMV from thermal neutrality) and ACMV energy efficiency (minimizing
cooling energy consumption) based on its objective function (Eq. (1)).
In each testbed, the approximate MPC controller was implemented to Hence, the MPC maintained indoor PMV on the positive side but close to
perform real-time control of the ACMV system (the VAV box in the of­ the thermal neutrality at most office hours as shown in Fig. 7 (b), to
fice, the AHU in LT). The approximate MPC controller was programmed avoid overcooling and maintain best thermal comfort. By mimicking the
and executed in the same control server that the MPC controller was. control laws of the MPC, the approximate MPC also prevented the
The control performance of the approximate MPC controller is morning overshoot as shown in Fig. 7 (c) & (f). Both the MPC and the
compared to the MPC controller and the original reactive base control approximate MPC kept indoor PMV and room air temperature within
(Thermostat in the office, BMS in LT). The results of the MPC controller much narrower ranges from thermal neutrality as compared to that of
and the original control are obtained from the previous study [33] for the thermostat did. It suggests that the MPC and the approximate MPC
this comparison. Time periods of the test cases are summarised in maintained much more stable indoor thermal conditions than the ther­
Table 3. In the test periods, the office was operating during 8:00 am – mostat did.
6:00 pm of workdays and LT was operating according to the class Fig. 8 summarises the measured indoor PMV and room air temper­
schedule listed in Table 4. ature during office hours using box-and-whisker plots. These plots show
the statistical distributions of the measured data (maximum, 75th
3. Results percentile, median, mean, 25th percentile, and minimum) obtained
from 20 days of measurements per case in the office. The same config­
To evaluate the control performance of the approximate MPC, the uration of the box and whisker plot is applied to Figs. 9–11. Fig. 8 (a)
test results of the Approximate MPC case is compared to the MPC and shows that all the three controllers were able to maintain indoor PMV
within the comfortable range (-0.5 ≤ PMV ≤ 0.5) for all the office hours.
This could be due to the fact that the office was surrounded by adjacent
Table 3
air conditioning spaces and, thus, away from direct impact of weather
Time periods of the test cases.
disturbances. Despite so the MPC and the approximate MPC still provide
Office LT
thermal comfort advantage over the reactive thermostat by maintaining
Case Test Period (20 days/ Case Test Period (10 the indoor PMV much closer to thermal neutrality. MPC maintained the
case) days/case) most stable indoor thermal comfort condition, as indicated by the nar­
Approximate April – May 2019 Approximate November 2019 rowest interquartile range of PMV, followed by approximate MPC and
MPC MPC then thermostat, echoing the observations from Fig. 7. The MPC and the
MPC [33] February – March MPC [33] August –
approximate MPC also maintained indoor PMV on the positive side for
2019 September 2019
Thermostat December 2018 – BMS [33] August – most time of the office hours, suggesting that the optimization for
[33] January 2019 September 2019 cooling power saving caused the MPC to incline towards positive PMV.
Control server: Intel Core i5-3317U CPU Control server: Intel Core i5-6200U This control characteristic was mimicked by the approximate MPC. In
and 4G RAM with MATLAB/Simulink CPU and 8 GB RAM with MATLAB/ contrast, without any consciousness to save cooling power, the ther­
platform Simulink platform
mostat maintained indoor PMV on the negative side for most time of the

7
S. Yang et al. Applied Energy 288 (2021) 116648

Table 4
Weekly class schedule of LT during the test period [33].

9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Key: - class

Fig. 7. Time series of indoor conditions measured in the office during office hours of the whole test period (20 days per case). (a), (b) & (c) Room air temperature.
(d), (e) & (f) Indoor PMV.

Fig. 8. Statistical distributions of (a) indoor PMV and (b) room air temperature measured in the office during office hours of the whole test period.

office hours. The set-point-chasing nature of the thermostat can be seen
more clearly in Fig. 8 (b). It shows that both the mean and median room
air temperature in the Thermostat case is 23.4 ◦ C, very close to the room
air temperature set point of 23 ◦ C in the thermostat. Mean and median
room air temperature in the MPC case is a higher 24.1 ◦ C, which is the
outcome of chasing the objectives (minimize cooling energy consump­
tion and minimize the deviation between indoor PMV and thermal
neutrality) defined in Eq. (1). Mean and median room air temperature in
the Approximate MPC case are 24.2 ◦ C and 24.1 ◦ C, respectively, very
close to that of the MPC. The measured indoor PMV and room air
temperature shown in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 suggests that the approximate
MPC reproduced the control characteristics of MPC, in terms of con­
trolling room thermal conditions, fairly closely.
Fig. 9 summarises the statistical distributions of measured cooling
power supplied by the VAV box to the office during office hours using
box-and-whisker plots. The cooling power is evaluated with the
measured temperature and flowrate of supply air as well as room air
temperature, as described in Section 2.2.1. The mean cooling power of
the Thermostat case was the highest among the three cases at 1.88 kWh.
The MPC case shows a substantial reduction in mean cooling power at

8
S. Yang et al.
Fig. 9. Statistical distributions of measured cooling power supplied by the VAV
box during office hours of the whole test period (10 days per case).
0.78 kWh, a 58.9% reduction compared to the Thermostat case. By
mimicking the control laws of MPC, the approximate MPC retained most
of the energy-saving potential of MPC by achieving 51.6% reduction in
mean cooling power reduction compared to the Thermostat case. Since
cooling power in all three cases was measured at the same intervals for
the same amount of time, the mean cooling power directly reflects the
cooling energy consumption over the test period. The results suggest
that the MPC achieved significant cooling energy reduction while
improving indoor thermal comfort compared to the original thermostat
Fig. 10. Statistical distributions of (a) indoor PMV and (b) room air temperature measured in LT during class time of the whole test period.
Fig. 11. Energy performance of the BMS, MPC and approximate MPC cases in LT. (a) Statistical distributions of measured cooling power supplied by the AHU, (b)
average weekly ACMV electricity consumption.
9
Applied Energy 288 (2021) 116648
control. The approximate MPC was able to capture most of the control
characteristics of the MPC and retained most of the benefits.
While retaining most benefits of the MPC, the approximate MPC
greatly reduced the computation load as compared to the MPC. The
average CPU processing time needed to generate the cooling power set
point for the VAV box in the office in a control interval was 2.5 s in the
MPC controller but largely reduced to 0.016 s in the approximate MPC
controller. The much higher computation efficiency of the approximate
MPC makes it much more adaptable to low-power hardware (e.g., PLC
and DDC used in buildings) as compared to the MPC.
3.2. Test results of LT
Fig. 10 shows the statistical distributions of room air temperature
and indoor PMV measured during class time using the box-and-whisker
plots. The room air temperature is measured by the air temperature
sensor and the indoor PMV is measured by the globe temperature, air
temperature, air velocity and RH sensors as described in Section 2.2.2.
The tendency to overcool LT by the reactive BMS can be obviously seen
in Fig. 10 (a), as indicated by a mean PMV of − 0.35. Indoor PMV in the
BMS case went lower than the lower bound of the comfortable range
(PMV = − 0.5), causing occupants to suffer from thermal discomfort, for
about 12% of the class time. In contrast, both the MPC and the
approximate MPC kept indoor PMV within the comfortable range for all
the class time, with a mean indoor PMV of 0.07 and 0.01, respectively. It
indicates that significant improvements in thermal comfort were ach­
ieved by the MPC and the approximate MPC, as compared to the BMS.
S. Yang et al.
Similar to that observed in the office, without the consciousness to save
cooling energy, the reactive BMS control tends to overcool LT and kept
indoor PMV to be negative for all the class time, suggesting excessive
cooling energy used in the BMS case.
Fig. 10 (b) shows that both the mean and median room air temper­
ature with the BMS control are 24.1 ◦ C, which is close to the room air
temperature set point of 24 ◦ C, indicating the set-point-chasing control
characteristic of the BMS. In contrast, both the MPC and the approxi­
mate MPC kept indoor PMV close to the thermal neutrality and on the
positive side for the majority of time, preventing the overcooling issue.
This indicates the control characteristics of MPC in chasing the multiple
targets of thermal comfort and minimizing cooling power. The approx­
imate MPC mimicked these control characteristics fairly closely. As an
outcome of the control characteristics of the MPC and the approximate
MPC, the mean and median room air temperature was 25.2 ◦ C in the
MPC case and 25.1 ◦ C in the approximate MPC case. The only attribute
that the approximate MPC fell short compared to the MPC was that the
approximate MPC could not keep the room conditions as stable as the
MPC did. This could be due to the fact that LT was directly subjected to
the impacts of weather (walls are directly exposed to outdoor) and
highly dynamic occupancy load. The dynamics of heat loads through
walls and from occupancy might have added difficulties for the
approximate MPC control algorithm.
Fig. 11 summarizes the cooling energy consumption of the three
cases in LT, which is measured by the energy meter described in Section
2.2.2. Fig. 11 (a) shows the statistical distributions of measured cooling
power supplied by the AHU to LT using box-and-whisker plots. Among
the three cases, the mean cooling power is the highest in the BMS case
with 32.1 kWh. The MPC and the Approximate MPC cases are signifi­
cantly lower in mean cooling power at 22.3 kWh and 22.1 kWh,
respectively. Fig. 11 (b) shows the average weekly ACMV electricity
consumption of the three cases. ACMV electricity consumption consists
of electricity consumption by the AHU ‘Fan’ and ‘Cooling’, which is the
thermal cooling power measured across the cooling coil divided by the
estimated mean coefficient of performance (COP = 5.39) of the chiller
serving LT. The MPC and approximate MPC achieved 36.7% and 36.2%
reduction in ACMV electricity consumption as compared to the BMS.
The approximate MPC has, again, demonstrated its ability to capture
most of the benefits of the MPC, in terms of energy saving and thermal
comfort.
Similar to the CPU time results observed in the office, the approxi­
mate MPC also largely reduced the average CPU processing time needed
to generate a cooling power set point for the AHU of LT in a control
interval to 0.017 s, from 6.3 s in the MPC.
4. Discussion
4.1. Advantages of approximate MPC in practical implementation
In the experiments, the proposed approximate MPC showed a few
technical advantages over the MPC in practical implementation. The
approximate MPC significantly reduced the computational load, as
compared to the MPC with only slightly compromised control perfor­
mance in terms of thermal comfort and energy saving compared to the
MPC but still significantly better than the original reactive-based con­
trols. The approximate MPC is also much easier to be implemented in
low-power control hardware (e.g., PLC and DDC) and low-level pro­
gramming languages, as it does not need to solve optimization problems.
Thus, the approximate MPC is much more compatible with existing BMS
hardware and software than MPC, which requires high computing
power and advanced optimization software with dedicated libraries/
tools. The development of approximate MPC adds to the initial devel­
opment of MPC since approximate MPC would have to ‘learn’ from MPC.
Despite needing additional effort at the initial development stage,
approximate MPC can run on low-power hardware for the rest of the
building’s operational life whereas MPC requires high-power hardware
10
Applied Energy 288 (2021) 116648
and advanced optimization software for the entire building operational
life. Since approximate MPC can run on typical industrial controllers and
its control algorithm is essentially running as a black-box, approximate
MPC presents a much smoother learning curve for facility managers as
compared to MPC, which has highly explicit building model and opti­
mization algorithm.
4.2. Applicability and limitations of approximate MPC
The proposed approximate MPC is developed based on a fully data-
driven approach, i.e., when the proposed approximate MPC is imple­
mented in another building, operation data of that particular building
will be needed to retrain and update the approximate MPC (in terms of
input variables, hidden layer size and model parameters). However, the
framework for model and control algorithm configuration (NARX RNN)
and the methodology for controller development should be generally
applicable. This is demonstrated in the current paper that the approxi­
mate MPC controllers in the two different testbeds share an identical
model configuration framework and development process, as described
in Section 2.1. The only differences are the hidden layer sizes and the
input variables, as described in Section 2.4. The two chosen testbeds
represent some common built environments. The office has moderate,
smooth occupancy load representing typical commercial built environ­
ments. LT has high-dynamic and heavy occupancy load, representing
high-heat-density built environment.
The experiments conducted in this study, to some extent, verified the
resilience of the approximate MPC to stochastic disturbances, including
internal heat loads and weather conditions. The approximate MPC ran
for 10 weekdays in November 2019 in LT, when LT was under stochastic
occupancy and weather conditions. The estimated number of occupancy
varied between 0 and 180 with a median value of 66, depending on the
actual class schedule running in LT. The sky clearness index [45] that
represents weather conditions varied between 0.23 and 0.50 with a
median value of 0.36 and its distribution is shown in Table 5. Under the
stochastic disturbances, the approximate MPC still achieved most of the
benefits of the MPC, in terms of both energy saving and thermal comfort
as discussed in Section 3.2. As the approximate MPC ‘learns’ from the
MPC, the resilience of the approximate MPC would continue to improve
if a stochastic or robust MPC is employed to generate the building
operation data to train the approximate MPC.
However, a limitation of the current study is that we could not verify
the resilience of the approximate MPC for disturbances that go outside
the range covered by the current experiments (internal load dynamics,
tropical climate). Table 5 shows that the weather conditions of the
approximate MPC test period are representative of the intermediate sky
condition, which happens on 95% of days in a year in Singapore ac­
cording to the Singapore typical meteorological year (TMY) data [46].
The resilience of the approximate MPC for the remaining 5% days with
overcast and clear sky conditions could be verified in future studies.
Another limitation of this study is that building heating was not
considered in the experiments as both testbeds are in tropics, where
heating is generally not needed in buildings. Adopting the proposed
approximate MPC for regions where heating is needed would require
measuring heating power data as one of the inputs for the development
and operation of the approximate MPC.
Table 5
Comparison of the statistical distributions of sky conditions between the
Singapore TMY data and approximate MPC test period.
Ranges of sky Sky clearness Days of Singapore Days of approximate
clearness index classification TMY data [46] MPC test period
0.05–0.20 Overcast 14 0
0.20–0.35 Intermediate 30 5
0.35–0.50 Intermediate 228 4
0.50–0.65 Intermediate 88 1
0.65–0.80 Clear 5 0
S. Yang et al.
5. Conclusion
This paper proposed and developed an approximate MPC using the
recurrent neural network with a structure of nonlinear autoregressive
network with exogenous inputs to approximate the control laws of MPC
for building automation and control applications. The approximate MPC
can mimic the behaviors of MPC in controlling buildings without
needing to solve the optimization problem. The control performance of
the approximate MPC was evaluated through experiments in two test­
beds, an office and a lecture theatre, to control their air conditioning
systems. The control performance of the approximate MPC was
compared to the original reactive controls of the two testbeds as well as
MPC. In the office, the MPC and approximate MPC reduced 58.5% and
51.6% of cooling energy consumption, respectively, as compared to the
original reactive control. In the lecture theatre, the MPC and approxi­
mate MPC reduced 36.7% and 36.2% of cooling energy consumption,
respectively, as compared to the original reactive control. The energy
performance results suggest that the approximate MPC could retain most
of the energy-saving potential of MPC. The approximate MPC also
captured most of the thermal comfort performance of the MPC. The
approximate MPC controllers were more than 100 times faster than the
MPC controllers in both testbeds in determining the control commands
for each time step, suggesting that approximate MPC has much lower
computational power requirements than MPC. This study demonstrated
the feasibility of employing approximate MPC to retain much of the
benefits of MPC while largely lowering the control hardware computa­
tion power demand for implementation.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Shiyu Yang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation,
Investigation, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Project adminis­
tration. Man Pun Wan: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing - re­
view & editing, Resources. Wanyu Chen: Formal analysis,
Visualization. Bing Feng Ng: Supervision, Resources. Swapnil Dubey:
Resources.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
This research is financially supported by JTC Corporation (contract
nos. N190107T00 and 2019-0607) and Smart Nation & Digital Gov­
ernment Office (SNDGO) of Singapore (Grant no. NRF2016IDM-
TRANS001-031).
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