A Practical Approach to Representation of Real-time Building Control Applications in Simulation

Computer based automation and control systems are becoming increasingly important in smart sustainable buildings, often referred to as automated buildings (ABs), in order to automatically control, optimize and supervise a wide range of building performance applications over a network while minimizing energy consumption and associated green house gas emission. This technology generally refers to building automation and control systems (BACS) architecture. Instead of costly and time-consuming experiments, this paper focuses on development and design of a distributed dynamic simulation environment with the capability to represent BACS architecture in simulation by run-time coupling two or more different software tools over a network. This involves using distributed dynamic simulations as means to analyze the performance and enhance networked real-time control systems in ABs and improve the functions of real BACS technology. The application and capability of this new dynamic simulation environment are demonstrated by an experimental design, in this paper.