Volume 31: Clean Energy Technologies towards Carbon Neutrality

Benchmarking HVAC controller performance with a digital twin Fazel Khayatian, Hanmin Cai, Aaron Bojarski, Philipp Heer, Andrew Bollinger

Abstract

This paper presents a pipeline for creating digital twins of building energy systems, which is shared as an open test-environment for controller benchmarking. The digital twin is calibrated based on an extensive dataset including a wide variety of data with fine temporal resolutions. The comprehensive list of controllable variables, the temporal resolution of measurements, and the real-time capabilities of the digital twin distinguish this work from the existing test environments. A case study is also provided to exemplify the use of this open environment for benchmarking the performance of building automation and control systems.

Keywords Digital twin, HVAC control, Benchmarking, Building energy performance