Heating and cooling management to reduce energy consumption

In a simple model, a schedule can control when the heat or air conditioning turn on and off. Using the OptimizedStartStop kitControl component you can configure a more sophisticated automatic system that optimizes heating and cooling start and stop times based on actual outside and inside temperatures.

To conserve energy in a building, the OptimizedStartStop kitControl component serves two goals:

  • Turn the heating or cooling equipment on at the latest possible time while still providing a comfortable temperature during building occupancy.

  • Turn the same equipment off at the earliest possible time, allowing the building to “drift” while staying within a comfortable temperature range until it is no longer occupied.

Starting and stopping heating or cooling equipment are valid schedule events, which you link to the OptimizedStartStop component. Setting the component’s Start Enable or Stop Enable property to true initiates the heating or cooling event on behalf of the schedule. Once started or stopped, the component runs a calculation 15 seconds after the beginning of every minute until the next event, which is not already set in the schedule. The result of the calculation is called the Calculated Command Time. The value of this property determines the next scheduled event: an early start command to achieve a specified temperature range by the time the building is occupied or an early stop command without sacrificing the temperature range by the time the space is unoccupied. After a schedule invokes the Calculated Command Time, the component analyzes the actual area response (temperature change rate) and makes weighted adjustments to the calculation parameters based on the detected values so that subsequent calculations might be more accurate.

If one of the enable values (Start Enable or Stop Enable) is scheduled to be set to true in one hour, but is already true, the component performs no calculation even if Start Enable or Stop Enable is set to true.