Reinforcement Learning for Automous Building Energy Management

In the gradually digitized energy systems, the cutting-edge technologies including smart meters, information and communication technologies (ICT), and Internet-of-things (IoT) have increasingly used to make energy systems smarter. There is a broad range of applications that are helping smart buildings to become a reality. IoT generates an enormous amount of data that can be analyzed in depth to reveal the impact of building operation on energy consumption, greenhouse gas emission, users and owners. The innovation brought by big data can change the landscape of traditional building management. For example, online data-driven models generated by novel algorithms can enable building operation quickly adapting to the needs of users and energy grids. Machine and deep learning provide new opportunities through implementation into building energy management systems.

The objective of this project is to develop methods, tools and theories for optimizing building energy systems through machine and deep learning methods, in particular, reinforcement learning. A multi-agent based model will be created and applied to buildings to improve indoor environment and energy efficiency, to reduce greenhouse gas emission, and to make energy demand flexible.