Robert G. Lutes

Transaction-based building controls framework, Volume 2: Platform descriptive model and requirements

Transaction-based Building Controls (TBC) offer a control systems platform that provides an agent execution environment that meets the growing requirements for security, resource utilization, and reliability. This report outlines the requirements for a platform to meet these needs and describes an illustrative/exemplary implementation.

VOLTTRON: User Guide

This document is a user guide for the deployment of the Transactional Network platform and agent/application development within the VOLTTRON. The intent of this user guide is to provide a description of the functionality of the Transactional Network Platform. This document describes how to deploy the platform, including installation, use, guidance, and limitations. It also describes how additional features can be added to enhance its current functionality.

Transactional network: Improving efficiency and enabling grid services for buildings

Because of a need to reduce electricity consumption and to make electricity generation cleaner, there is an impetus to improve the energy efficiency of the building stock and widespread installation of distributed variable renewable energy generation. Soon, a significant fraction of transportation energy will be in the form of electricity. Significant gains in building operational efficiency are possible because between 20% and 30% of the energy consumed in commercial buildings is typically wasted because of poor or inefficient building operations. To address these problems, the U.S. Department of Energys Building Technologies Office is supporting the development of the concept of a “transactional network” that supports energy, operational, and financial transactions between building systems (e.g., rooftop units), and the electric power grid using applications, or “agents,” that reside either on the equipment, on local building controllers, or in the Cloud. This article describes the transactional network concept, the platform, and two example agents/applications within VOLTTRON™ that improve operational efficiency and enable grid services for packaged air conditioners and heat pumps (rooftop units). It also describes the results from testing the concept at some demonstration sites.

VOLTTRON Lite: Integration Platform for the Transactional Network

In FY13, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) with funding from the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Building Technologies Office (BTO) designed, prototyped and tested a transactional network platform. The platform is intended to support energy, operational and financial transactions between any networked entities (equipment, organizations, buildings, grid, etc.). Initially, in FY13, the concept demonstrated transactions between packaged rooftop units (RTUs) and the electric grid using applications or “agents” that reside on the platform, on the equipment, on local building controller or in the Cloud. This document describes the core of the transactional network platform, the Volttron Lite™ software and associated services hosted on the platform. Future enhancements are also discussed. The appendix of the document provides examples of how to use the various services hosted on the platform.

VOLTTRON™: Using distributed control and sensing to integrate buildings and the grid

New smart grid technologies are creating a significant potential for smart building systems to provide grid services to power system operators. Communication networks and advanced control systems are a necessary enabler of this new potential. VOLTTRON™ was designed as an open-source distributed control and sensing platform for integrating buildings and the power grid by connecting devices, agents in the platform, agents in the Cloud, and signals from the power grid.

Rooftop unit embedded diagnostics: Automated fault detection and diagnostics (AFDD) development, field testing and validation

This report documents the development, testing and field validation of the integrated AFDD and advanced rooftop unit (RTU) controls using a single controller in buildings.

VOLTTRON 3.0: User Guide

This document is a user guide for the deployment of the transactional network platform and agent/application development within VOLTTRON. The intent of this user guide is to provide a description of the functionality of the transactional network platform. This document describes how to deploy the platform, including installation, use, guidance, and limitations. It also describes how additional features can be added to enhance its current functionality.

Field Testing and Demonstration of the Smart Monitoring and Diagnostic System (SMDS) for Packaged Air-Conditioners and Heat Pumps

This documents results of a project focused on testing and demonstrating both the hardware and software versions of the smart monitoring and diagnostic system (SMDS) under field conditions.

OpenEIS. Users Guide

This document is a users guide for OpenEIS, a software code designed to provide standard methods for authoring, sharing, testing, using and improving algorithms for operational building energy efficiency.

OpenEIS. Developer Guide

The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Building Technologies Office (BTO) is supporting the development of an open-source software tool for analyzing building energy and operational data: OpenEIS (open energy information system). This tool addresses the problems of both owners of building data and developers of tools to analyze this data. Building owners and managers have data but lack the tools to analyze it while tool developers lack data in a common format to ease development of reusable data analysis tools. This document is intended for developers of applications and explains the mechanisms for building analysis applications, accessing data, and displaying data using a visualization from the included library. A brief introduction to the visualizations can be used as a jumping off point for developers familiar with JavaScript to produce their own. Several example applications are included which can be used along with this document to implement algorithms for performing energy data analysis.