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research article

Fully data-driven and modular building thermal control with physically consistent modeling

Montazeri, Mina
•
Remlinger, Carl  
•
Bejar Haro, Benjamin  
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July 15, 2025
Applied Energy

Machine learning has experienced significant growth in the smart building sector, whether for building modeling or energy management. Data-driven approaches leverage available measurements to bypass the slow and costly calibration of physics-based models, offering adaptability, low maintenance and greater flexibility. However, the quality of these models depends on historical data, which may be lacking for newly constructed buildings. This paper introduces a fully data-driven modular approach, from temperature modeling to heating control, that requires few data when transferred from a source to a target building. The controller consists of two modules: a deep reinforcement learning agent that manages the desired room temperature and an action-mapper specific to each room that adjusts heating controls. To adapt the controller to a new room, only the action-mapper is substituted. This approach requires just a few weeks of data and reuses an effective policy with minimal effort. The controller is trained using a neural network-based environment simulator, incorporating physical consistency to ensure accurate states and rewards. Simulations and real-world tests show the modular controller achieves 13 % average energy savings (up to 17 %) compared to traditional transfer learning methods, and 26 % (up to 32 %) compared to rule-based controllers, without compromising comfort.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1016/j.apenergy.2025.125770
Scopus ID

2-s2.0-105002026016

Author(s)
Montazeri, Mina

Empa - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology

Remlinger, Carl  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Bejar Haro, Benjamin  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Heer, Philipp

Empa - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology

Date Issued

2025-07-15

Published in
Applied Energy
Volume

390

Article Number

125770

Subjects

Building energy management

•

Building thermal control

•

Deep reinforcement learning

•

Modular

•

Transferability

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
SDSC-GE  
FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

Swiss Data Science Center

C20-13

Available on Infoscience
April 16, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/249329
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