Feasibility and Proof of Concept of a Dense, Low Cost, Network of Sensors Driving Intelligent Building Agents for Air Quality and Energy Control

Commercial buildings 50,000ft² or less in size account for 94% of all commercial buildings and 44% of commercial building energy use. Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) consumes 40%-60% of total building energy, and up to a third of that energy is wasted. Rising fuel costs, climate change concerns, and policy directives from the Biden Administration are driving the need to increased energy efficiency and the elimination of waste. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic increased public awareness of the importance of indoor air quality (IAQ) and highlighted the poor ventilation in any indoor spaces. Building Automation Systems (BAS) are an effective tool for improving energy efficiency and IAQ, but an astonishing 87% of smaller commercial buildings lack any form of BAS due to the cost of complexity of such systems. The proposed research enables a data-driven approach to building efficiency in smaller commercial buildings, delivering BAS-like results with far lower cost and complexity. Xmark Labs LLC has developed an affordable, reliable, building efficiency sensor for retrofits in commercial buildings. The research combines this system with BACnet functionality and intelligent building agents, enabling interoperability between building systems, and the potential for automatic optimization of HVAC and IAQ.