A Hardware-in-the-Loop System for Monitoring Building Energy Consumption with Sparse Sensors

Germany’s residential heating demands contribute significantly to national energy consumption and CO2emissions, highlighting a need for more efficient building energy management. Despite the integration of internet-connected controls in modern heating systems, efficiency issues often go undetected, as existing systems mainly respond reactively rather than proactively. Addressing this gap, we introduce a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) system that emulates a virtual building environment for real-time monitoring and diagnostics, aiming to enhance efficiency through predictive anomaly detection and reduced sensor dependency. This setup features a hybrid heating system comprising an air-water heat pump, a gas boiler, and multiple storage tanks to simulate realistic thermal flows in buildings. This laboratory configuration, alongside a comprehensive data acquisition system and climate chamber, enables the emulation of diverse operational conditions.Preliminary results from simulated faults in the system demonstrate the detection and analysis of variations in operational dynamics, showcasing its potential for improving energy consumption management in residential heating.