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  4. Reinforcement Learning for proactive operation of residential energy systems by learning stochastic occupant behavior and fluctuating solar energy: Balancing comfort, hygiene and energy use
 
research article

Reinforcement Learning for proactive operation of residential energy systems by learning stochastic occupant behavior and fluctuating solar energy: Balancing comfort, hygiene and energy use

Heidari, Amirreza  
•
Maréchal, François  
•
Khovalyg, Dolaana  
July 15, 2022
Applied Energy

When it comes to residential buildings, there are several stochastic parameters, such as renewable energy production, outdoor air conditions, and occupants’ behavior, that are hard to model and predict accurately, with some being unique in each specific building. This increases the complexity of developing a generalizable optimal control method that can be transferred to different buildings. Rather than hard-programming human knowledge into the controller (in terms of rules or models), a learning ability can be provided to the controller such that over the time it can learn by itself how to maintain an optimal operation in each specific building. This research proposes a model-free control framework based on Reinforcement Learning that takes into account the stochastic hot water use behavior of occupants, solar power generation, and weather conditions, and learns how to make a balance between the energy use, occupant comfort and water hygiene in a solar-assisted space heating and hot water production system. A stochastic-based offline training procedure is proposed to give a prior experience to the agent in a safe simulation environment, and further ensure occupants comfort and health when the algorithm starts online learning on the real house. To make a realistic assessment without interrupting the occupants, weather conditions and hot water use behavior are experimentally monitored in three case studies in different regions of Switzerland, and the collected data are used in simulations to evaluate the proposed control framework against two rule-based methods. Results indicate that the proposed framework could achieve an energy saving from 7% to 60%, mainly by adapting to solar power generation, without violating comfort or compromising the health of occupants.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.apenergy.2022.119206
Author(s)
Heidari, Amirreza  
Maréchal, François  
Khovalyg, Dolaana  
Date Issued

2022-07-15

Published in
Applied Energy
Volume

318

Article Number

119206

Subjects

Reinforcement Learning

•

Space heating

•

Solar

•

Building

•

Control

•

Occupant behavior

URL

ScienceDirect

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261922005712

ResearchGate

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360515227_Reinforcement_Learning_for_proactive_operation_of_residential_energy_systems_by_learning_stochastic_occupant_behavior_and_fluctuating_solar_energy_Balancing_comfort_hygiene_and_energy_use
Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
ICE  
SCI-STI-FM  
Available on Infoscience
May 17, 2022
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/187923
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