Energy efficiency through a load-adaptive building automation in production

The research project BIG, which is funded by the German federal ministry of education and research, aims to develop a load-adaptive building automation system connected with the production planning and control system as well as weather forecasts. It intends to reduce energy consumption of supporting processes during the production, such as heating, air conditioning, ventilation and lighting. Compared with current building automation systems, BIG pursuers a software solution to derive actual requirements for indoor climate under consideration of internal and external thermal and light conditions, which controls corresponding building infrastructure adaptively. According to the connection with production planning and control systems (PPC), the information such as shift plans, the number of employees and the allocation of employees is derived and interpreted into actual indoor climate demand for different areas of the whole production hall. According to the plan of machine utilization as well as their power outputs from PPC, it is feasible to define future thermal influence as a result of production activities. Simultaneously, external thermal and light effects from the environment can be predicted and utilized by the integration of weather forecasts.