Smart monitoring for sustainable and energy-efficient buildings: a case study

Steadily raising standards for indoor environmentalquality in living and office spaces lead to an extensive utilization ofhigh performance and power-demanding climate control systems.An increasing utility and energy cost for buildings operation,in turn, pushes researchers and manufactures to explore newstrategies to reduce energy waste and minimize ecological impact.The key enabler for an efficient energy management is accuratemeasurement and assessment of buildings operation that con-tribute to the total load. In this paper we present an ad-hocWireless Sensor Network deployment that performs monitoringof electricity load and occupants comfort level in a universitybuilding where more than a hundred students and employeesare present every day. The system consists of 27 sensor devicescontinuously measuring vibration, temperature, humidity, lightand the air conditioning system electrical load. An accurateanalysis of indoor conditions, recognition of inhabitant comfortlevel, automatic forecasting and recommendations on optimalbalance between environmental quality and power demands is themain objective of the presented system. Preliminary laboratoryexperiments and following 15 months of continuous real-worldoperation demonstrate that the presented system provides accu-rate monitoring delivering a valuable insight into the buildingoperation.