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29 May 2022
Presentation
Titel
Application of ontologies for BACS design automation
Titel Supplements
Presentation held at LDAC 2022, 29 May 2022
Abstract
The presented work discusses the potential application of ontologies for design automation in the building automation field. It relates to an ongoing implementation and related prototype being developed by an automation systems provider. Modern buildings have complex technical equipment which is hard to operate efficiently from a user’s point of view. Optimal commissioning and operation of building energy systems necessitate complex design and configuration of building automation and control systems (BACS). Generally, a BACS supplier or installer uses its own software system and customized monitoring databases. The presented approach tries to automate BACS setup relying on semantic modeling and knowledge reuse. It shall support the design and configuration of complex BACS systems by the means of automated characterization of the underlying building energy system and inferring of its most adapted control systems and strategies. For that purpose, it makes use of ontologies for modeling the topology of energy systems as well as emulating the knowledge of BACS design experts.
Indeed, automation providers have much expert knowledge and experience in the design, evaluation and commissioning of energy system controls. It is investigated whether this manufacturer expertise can be represented via knowledge representation and model parameterization. A workflow is proposed that shall make it possible to support automated BACS design relying on a formalized description of HVAC systems from a wide variety of application fields using a generic templates library. For this purpose, existing energy systems are examined with regard to various structural properties such as topology, energy flows and control loop structures as well as needed sensors and monitoring functions. It is taken into account that the energy supply of buildings is planned individually to a high level of detail due to different system requirements. Therefore, an automated design of control systems requires the limitation and classification of possible system configurations.
Knowledge about control concepts and controller architectures of distributed energy systems is required for the automatic generation of control architectures. This knowledge must be collected, systematized and stored appropriately. At the beginning, relevant controller concepts and controller architectures for the application in the targeted energy system are selected and described. A component library contains models for controllers and energy system components as well as buildings and plant models. For this purpose, it is necessary to create tools that allow the semi-automatic generation and testing of such components from the library. A prototype is being implemented inside design software of IFM automation solutions provider in cooperation with Fraunhofer.
Author(s)
Funder
Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz BMWK