Results

In recent years, many tertiary buildings have invested in sensor networks to monitor and control their systems. However, about 90% of the collected data is not used for decision-making. This means that if the building's operating conditions have changed, energy managers need to reprogram the entire system, and users may experience thermal discomfort for a considerable period. The usual strategy requires significant effort to modify the state of the heating and cooling units, as the process is based on trial and error experiments. As a result, this situation leads to greater inefficiency in the use of energy systems and less energy savings. Despite this problem, the application of advanced control systems is still not widespread due to their usual complexity.

Competitive advantages over current solutions

N2B2 provides a service to simplify decision-making in tertiary buildings. It only requires historical data from three parameters over a period of about two years. In other words, detailed characteristics of all building elements (i.e., structure, installations) are not necessary compared to approaches based on BIM or Digital Twins. For this reason, the amount of data and computation time can be significantly reduced. Moreover, building managers or maintenance staff do not need advanced technical knowledge to operate the system. N2B2 is presented to the user as a black box.

Once the system training process is completed, it operates on its own. In terms of benefits, the tests conducted have achieved an average reduction of 20% in the boiler operating time required to heat the building without compromising the thermal comfort of the users.