Treating Common Problems Observed During Smart Building Control Real-Life Testing: Sharing Practical Experience

Building energy management systems (BEMSs) have attracted much attention in recent years due to their potential to reduce overall energy consumption, reduce electricity bills, improve the efficiency of the electricity network and effectively manage renewable energy exploitation. However, testing the efficiency of such mechanisms in a real-life setup is not trivial, due to different unexpected incidents caused by the Building Automation and Control System (BACS) itself or by human participants who do not always conform to the experiment constraints, rendering comparability and conclusions extraction a quite tricky process. Maintaining tests’ credibility is a multi-factor problem which the simulation tests are fail to emulate, limiting the transferability of simulation-based results into real-life practise. In this work, we present a conceptualized framework for real-life smart building control testing, that presents useful suggestions towards maintaining testing credibility, ensuring solid performance evaluation outcomes and reliability. Finally, the current work is a collection of practical lessons learnt during BEMS performance testing activities.