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Description
Through manipulation of adaptable opportunities available within a given environment, individuals become active participants in managing personal comfort requirements, by exercising control over their comfort without the assistance of mechanical heating and cooling systems. Similarly, continuous manipulation of a building skin's form, insulation, porosity, and transmissivity qualities exerts control over

Through manipulation of adaptable opportunities available within a given environment, individuals become active participants in managing personal comfort requirements, by exercising control over their comfort without the assistance of mechanical heating and cooling systems. Similarly, continuous manipulation of a building skin's form, insulation, porosity, and transmissivity qualities exerts control over the energy exchanged between indoor and outdoor environments. This research uses four adaptive response variables in a modified software algorithm to explore an adaptive building skin's potential in reacting to environmental stimuli with the purpose of minimizing energy use without sacrificing occupant comfort. Results illustrate that significant energy savings can be realized with adaptive envelopes over static building envelopes even under extreme summer and winter climate conditions; that the magnitude of these savings are dependent on climate and orientation; and that occupant thermal comfort can be improved consistently over comfort levels achieved by optimized static building envelopes. The resulting adaptive envelope's unique climate-specific behavior could inform designers in creating an intelligent kinetic aesthetic that helps facilitate adaptability and resiliency in architecture.
ContributorsErickson, James (Author) / Bryan, Harvey (Thesis advisor) / Addison, Marlin (Committee member) / Kroelinger, Michael D. (Committee member) / Reddy, T. Agami (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
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Description
Lighting systems and air-conditioning systems are two of the largest energy consuming end-uses in buildings. Lighting control in smart buildings and homes can be automated by having computer controlled lights and window blinds along with illumination sensors that are distributed in the building, while temperature control can be automated by

Lighting systems and air-conditioning systems are two of the largest energy consuming end-uses in buildings. Lighting control in smart buildings and homes can be automated by having computer controlled lights and window blinds along with illumination sensors that are distributed in the building, while temperature control can be automated by having computer controlled air-conditioning systems. However, programming actuators in a large-scale environment for buildings and homes can be time consuming and expensive. This dissertation presents an approach that algorithmically sets up the control system that can automate any building without requiring custom programming. This is achieved by imbibing the system self calibrating and self learning abilities.

For lighting control, the dissertation describes how the problem is non-deterministic polynomial-time hard(NP-Hard) but can be resolved by heuristics. The resulting system controls blinds to ensure uniform lighting and also adds artificial illumination to ensure light coverage remains adequate at all times of the day, while adjusting for weather and seasons. In the absence of daylight, the system resorts to artificial lighting.

For temperature control, the dissertation describes how the temperature control problem is modeled using convex quadratic programming. The impact of every air conditioner on each sensor at a particular time is learnt using a linear regression model. The resulting system controls air-conditioning equipments to ensure the maintenance of user comfort and low cost of energy consumptions. The system can be deployed in large scale environments. It can accept multiple target setpoints at a time, which improves the flexibility and efficiency of cooling systems requiring temperature control.

The methods proposed work as generic control algorithms and are not preprogrammed for a particular place or building. The feasibility, adaptivity and scalability features of the system have been validated through various actual and simulated experiments.
ContributorsWang, Yuan (Author) / Dasgupta, Partha (Thesis advisor) / Davulcu, Hasan (Committee member) / Huang, Dijiang (Committee member) / Reddy, T. Agami (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Description
One of the key infrastructures of any community or facility is the energy system which consists of utility power plants, distributed generation technologies, and building heating and cooling systems. In general, there are two dimensions to “sustainability” as it applies to an engineered system. It needs to be designed, operated,

One of the key infrastructures of any community or facility is the energy system which consists of utility power plants, distributed generation technologies, and building heating and cooling systems. In general, there are two dimensions to “sustainability” as it applies to an engineered system. It needs to be designed, operated, and managed such that its environmental impacts and costs are minimal (energy efficient design and operation), and also be designed and configured in a way that it is resilient in confronting disruptions posed by natural, manmade, or random events. In this regard, development of quantitative sustainability metrics in support of decision-making relevant to design, future growth planning, and day-to-day operation of such systems would be of great value. In this study, a pragmatic performance-based sustainability assessment framework and quantitative indices are developed towards this end whereby sustainability goals and concepts can be translated and integrated into engineering practices.

New quantitative sustainability indices are proposed to capture the energy system environmental impacts, economic performance, and resilience attributes, characterized by normalized environmental/health externalities, energy costs, and penalty costs respectively. A comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment is proposed which includes externalities due to emissions from different supply and demand-side energy systems specific to the regional power generation energy portfolio mix. An approach based on external costs, i.e. the monetized health and environmental impacts, was used to quantify adverse consequences associated with different energy system components.

Further, this thesis also proposes a new performance-based method for characterizing and assessing resilience of multi-functional demand-side engineered systems. Through modeling of system response to potential internal and external failures during different operational temporal periods reflective of diurnal variation in loads and services, the proposed methodology quantifies resilience of the system based on imposed penalty costs to the system stakeholders due to undelivered or interrupted services and/or non-optimal system performance.

A conceptual diagram called “Sustainability Compass” is also proposed which facilitates communicating the assessment results and allow better decision-analysis through illustration of different system attributes and trade-offs between different alternatives. The proposed methodologies have been illustrated using end-use monitored data for whole year operation of a university campus energy system.
ContributorsMoslehi, Salim (Author) / Reddy, T. Agami (Thesis advisor) / Lackner, Klaus S (Committee member) / Parrish, Kristen (Committee member) / Pendyala, Ram M. (Committee member) / Phelan, Patrick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Description
Energy use within urban building stocks is continuing to increase globally as populations expand and access to electricity improves. This projected increase in demand could require deployment of new generation capacity, but there is potential to offset some of this demand through modification of the buildings themselves. Building

Energy use within urban building stocks is continuing to increase globally as populations expand and access to electricity improves. This projected increase in demand could require deployment of new generation capacity, but there is potential to offset some of this demand through modification of the buildings themselves. Building stocks are quasi-permanent infrastructures which have enduring influence on urban energy consumption, and research is needed to understand: 1) how development patterns constrain energy use decisions and 2) how cities can achieve energy and environmental goals given the constraints of the stock. This requires a thorough evaluation of both the growth of the stock and as well as the spatial distribution of use throughout the city. In this dissertation, a case study in Los Angeles County, California (LAC) is used to quantify urban growth, forecast future energy use under climate change, and to make recommendations for mitigating energy consumption increases. A reproducible methodological framework is included for application to other urban areas.

In LAC, residential electricity demand could increase as much as 55-68% between 2020 and 2060, and building technology lock-in has constricted the options for mitigating energy demand, as major changes to the building stock itself are not possible, as only a small portion of the stock is turned over every year. Aggressive and timely efficiency upgrades to residential appliances and building thermal shells can significantly offset the projected increases, potentially avoiding installation of new generation capacity, but regulations on new construction will likely be ineffectual due to the long residence time of the stock (60+ years and increasing). These findings can be extrapolated to other U.S. cities where the majority of urban expansion has already occurred, such as the older cities on the eastern coast. U.S. population is projected to increase 40% by 2060, with growth occurring in the warmer southern and western regions. In these growing cities, improving new construction buildings can help offset electricity demand increases before the city reaches the lock-in phase.
ContributorsReyna, Janet Lorel (Author) / Chester, Mikhail V (Thesis advisor) / Gurney, Kevin (Committee member) / Reddy, T. Agami (Committee member) / Rey, Sergio (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
In 2018, building energy use accounted for over 40% of total primary energy consumption in the United States; moreover, buildings account for ~40% of national CO2 emissions. One method for curbing energy use in buildings is to apply Demand Side Management (DSM) strategies, which focus on reducing the energy

In 2018, building energy use accounted for over 40% of total primary energy consumption in the United States; moreover, buildings account for ~40% of national CO2 emissions. One method for curbing energy use in buildings is to apply Demand Side Management (DSM) strategies, which focus on reducing the energy demand through various technological and operational approaches in different building sectors.

This PhD research examines the integration of DSM strategies in existing residential and commercial buildings in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area, a hot-arid climate. The author proposes three different case studies to evaluate the effectiveness of one DSM strategy in buildings, namely the integration of Phase Change Materials (PCMs). PCMs store energy in the freezing process and use that stored energy in the melting process to reduce the energy demand. The goal of these case studies is to analyze the potential of each strategy to reduce peak load and overall energy consumption in existing buildings.

First, this dissertation discusses the efficacy of coupling PCMs with precooling strategies in residential buildings to reduce peak demand. The author took a case study approach and simulated two precooling strategies, with and without PCM integration, in two sample single-family homes to assess the impact of the DSM strategies (i.e., precooling and PCM integration) on load shifting and load shedding in each home.

Second, this research addresses the feasibility of using PCMs as sensible and latent heat storage in commercial buildings. The author documents the process of choosing buildings for PCM installation, as well as the selection of PCMs for retrofitting purposes. Commercial building case studies compare experimental and simulation results, focusing on the impact of the PCMs on reducing the total annual energy demand and energy cost.

Finally, this research proposes a novel process for selecting PCMs as energy efficiency measures for building retrofits. This process facilitates the selection of a building and PCM that are complementary. Implementation of this process has not yet been tested; however, the process was developed based on experimental and simulation results from prior studies, and it would alleviate many of the PCM performance issues documented in those studies.
ContributorsAskari Tari, Neda (Author) / Parrish, Kristen (Thesis advisor) / Bryan, Harvey (Committee member) / Reddy, T. Agami (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
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Description
Natural disasters are occurring increasingly around the world, causing significant economiclosses. To alleviate their adverse effect, it is crucial to plan what should be done in response to them in a proactive manner. This research aims at developing proactive and real-time recovery algorithms for large-scale power networks exposed to weather events considering uncertainty.

Natural disasters are occurring increasingly around the world, causing significant economiclosses. To alleviate their adverse effect, it is crucial to plan what should be done in response to them in a proactive manner. This research aims at developing proactive and real-time recovery algorithms for large-scale power networks exposed to weather events considering uncertainty. These algorithms support the recovery decisions to mitigate the disaster impact, resulting in faster recovery of the network. The challenges associated with developing these algorithms are summarized below: 1. Even ignoring uncertainty, when operating cost of the network is considered the problem will be a bi-level optimization which is NP-hard. 2. To meet the requirement for real-time decision making under uncertainty, the problem could be formulated a Stochastic Dynamic Program with the aim to minimize the total cost. However, considering the operating cost of the network violates the underlying assumptions of this approach. 3. Stochastic Dynamic Programming approach is also not applicable to realistic problem sizes, due to the curse of dimensionality. 4. Uncertainty-based approaches for failure modeling, rely on point-generation of failures and ignore the network structure. To deal with the first challenge, in chapter 2, a heuristic solution framework is proposed, and its performance is evaluated by conducting numerical experiments. To address the second challenge, in chapter 3, after formulating the problem as a Stochastic Dynamic Program, an approximated dynamic programming heuristic is proposed to solve the problem. Numerical experiments on synthetic and realistic test-beds, show the satisfactory performance of the proposed approach. To address the third challenge, in chapter 4, an efficient base heuristic policy and an aggregation scheme in the action space is proposed. Numerical experiments on a realistic test-bed verify the ability of the proposed method to recover the network more efficiently. Finally, to address the fourth challenge, in chapter 5, a simulation-based model is proposed that using historical data and accounting for the interaction between network components, allows for analyzing the impact of adverse events on regional service level. A realistic case study is then conducted to showcase the applicability of the approach.
ContributorsInanlouganji, Alireza (Author) / Pedrielli, Giulia (Thesis advisor) / Mirchandani, Pitu (Committee member) / Reddy, T. Agami (Committee member) / Ju, Feng (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Description
An acute and crucial societal problem is the energy consumed in existing commercial buildings. There are 1.5 million commercial buildings in the U.S. with only about 3% being built each year. Hence, existing buildings need to be properly operated and maintained for several decades. Application of integrated centralized control systems

An acute and crucial societal problem is the energy consumed in existing commercial buildings. There are 1.5 million commercial buildings in the U.S. with only about 3% being built each year. Hence, existing buildings need to be properly operated and maintained for several decades. Application of integrated centralized control systems in buildings could lead to more than 50% energy savings.

This research work demonstrates an innovative adaptive integrated lighting control approach which could achieve significant energy savings and increase indoor comfort in high performance office buildings. In the first phase of the study, a predictive algorithm was developed and validated through experiments in an actual test room. The objective was to regulate daylight on a specified work plane by controlling the blind slat angles. Furthermore, a sensor-based integrated adaptive lighting controller was designed in Simulink which included an innovative sensor optimization approach based on genetic algorithm to minimize the number of sensors and efficiently place them in the office. The controller was designed based on simple integral controllers. The objective of developed control algorithm was to improve the illuminance situation in the office through controlling the daylight and electrical lighting. To evaluate the performance of the system, the controller was applied on experimental office model in Lee et al.’s research study in 1998. The result of the developed control approach indicate a significantly improvement in lighting situation and 1-23% and 50-78% monthly electrical energy savings in the office model, compared to two static strategies when the blinds were left open and closed during the whole year respectively.
ContributorsKarizi, Nasim (Author) / Reddy, T. Agami (Thesis advisor) / Bryan, Harvey (Committee member) / Dasgupta, Partha (Committee member) / Kroelinger, Michael D. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015