An intelligent energy measurement system

Abstract

Energy efficient buildings are becoming popular nowadays thanks to the increase of energy costs and to the ongoing awareness on the subject. In this research, a system which measures the steady state heat loss coefficient of a residential building was built. Part of this research involved the development of three energy performance protocols, each of which was tested against a benchmark formed from real data. The best protocol, on average, deviated by 6% from the actual energy use. The worst deviation, in this case, was 10% of the actual energy used. For this study a room in a typical Maltese building was used. It had its internal temperature as well as its relative humidity monitored for one complete year. The outcome of this investigation is also discussed in this dissertation. The developed system is designed in such a way that it reduces human intervention. It integrates a weather station and a number of nodes with sensors. The communication among the sensor nodes is performed through a wireless channel. Each sensor node consists of up to eight temperature sensors, a humidity sensor and a temperature control. The data is collected and stored in a PC. The design of the system permits easy adaptation of the system for other energy performance protocols or building analysis.