Daikin Industries, Ltd. and a research group led by Osaka University's Associate Professor Kazutetsu Taniguchi have developed a technology for automatically operating air conditioners using AI (artificial intelligence), and in demonstration experiments, they achieved energy savings of over 30% while maintaining a comfortable room temperature.
While there is a need to reduce energy consumption in order to achieve carbon neutrality, it is known that air conditioning accounts for approximately 4% of a building's energy consumption.Particularly with heating, due to recent improvements in the insulation performance of buildings and the heat generated by indoor computers and lighting, a comfortable room temperature may be maintained even if heating is stopped, but it is extremely difficult to determine whether heating can be stopped. There is a lot of waste.Energy management for air conditioning, which can solve this problem and achieve both comfort and energy savings through optimal equipment operation, is attracting attention.
The self-driving technology developed by Associate Professor Taniguchi and colleagues uses AI to learn how easily a room heats up or cools down, and then sets the optimal air conditioning every 15 minutes based on room temperature data, air conditioner operation data, and weather information data. It is said to find the temperature.By proactively shutting down heating when it is not needed, significant energy savings can be achieved while maintaining comfort.
In a demonstration experiment on the Osaka University campus, compared to manually operating the air conditioner to maintain the room temperature at 7 degrees from 6 a.m. to 25 p.m. during winter heating operation, automatic operation reduced the cumulative power consumption by 6kWh. (approximately 33%).Similar experiments were conducted under various conditions from December 2022 to March of the following year, and an average energy saving effect of around 12% was confirmed.
This technology uses an inexpensive computer to remotely control the remote control of existing air conditioners, so it can be relatively easily implemented in existing buildings.If it becomes widespread in office buildings in the future, it is expected to result in significant energy savings, and in addition to saving electricity in response to the recent rise in electricity costs, it is expected to make a major contribution to achieving carbon neutrality.
Paper information:[Applied Energy] Data-driven Online Energy Management Framework for HVAC Systems: an Experimental Study
