DISTANCE REGULATED ENERGY CONSUMING DEVICES
Background of the invention
Many residential homes in e.g. the USA only have one thermostat controlling the whole house. The thermostat is often located next to the main entrance, making installations very standardized and easy to handle. Furthermore, a large share of these households are only equipped with a simple heating/cooling electro-mechanical thermostat without any possibility of programming. In the few households having a programmable thermostat, this is highly dependant on the owner being able to program it correctly. The world wide waste of such energy resources gives a huge potential for energy savings.
Further, the consumption of electricity is not evenly distributed over the year, not even over the day. About two to four times a day, normally in the morning and in the evening, the consumption of electricity is very high, causing load peaks on the electricity distribution network. Sometimes the peaks are so big that black-outs occur.
This invention relates to the reduction of the consumption energy when it is not needed.
Summary of the invention
This invention relates to a unique occupancy-based electronic control of energy consuming devices, such as household devices like HVAC systems, or any other devices consuming energy even when no inhabitants or persons are using or even being close to the devices. The basic feature of this invention is to adjust the energy consuming devices according to residents/users locations, where the locations are provided by their cell phone/mobile phone or any other portable device being trackable or traceable in geographic location and in time (either via GPS or triangulating), in the following being referred to as their position identification device or devices..
One preferred, but non-limiting, example of the invention relates to the control of a thermostat controlling the cooling and heating of a household by a HVAC system. The idea of the invention, therefore, is to facilitate energy savings by allowing the HVAC systems to drift off when the comfort temperature is not required, as the house is not occupied.
The underlying principle being that the household thermostat will be so intelligent that the energy saving will happen automatically without the household members actually having to do something for it and without compromising on the comfort.
The idea for the occupancy-based electronic thermostat example is that:
1. If no persons are at home, the thermostat will automatically alter the set-point away from the specified comfort temperature.
2. The occupancy detection is built-in and will be linked to the household members' position identification device.
3. By linking to the individual position identification device ,it will be possible to off-set the comfort temperature in accordance with the household members' distance to the home (being at work, in school, on holiday etc.); ensuring that the comfort temperature will be re-established before their return by tracking the distance. 4. Additionally, the system will also be able to receive information about the current weather, making automatic night set-back etc., possible via the phone system.
The concept naturally bears the potential to be expanded to include other applications - e.g. terminating stand-by functions while the household is not occupied.
In an optional, and additional, more advanced embodiment of the present invention, the energy control system maps the individual resident's in a given single household based on their patterns of movement, where the maps vary in a number of dimensions or parameters, such as the residents distance from household, travelling speed, the time of day, the week and the month.
The energy control system, preferably adaptively, learns the resident's typical behaviours and patterns of movement by their position identification device, and uses these to predict a given behaviour of a resident, what the continuation of this behaviour will be, and when the resident will be expected to arrive at the household.
The energy control system preferably uses a dynamic model with deviation control to form the map of the single resident's patterns of movement, based on date obtained automatically from the individual resident's position identification devices. This method gives the energy control system the possibility to fully automatically optimize the overall efficiency of the energy usage in the household.
The energy control system enables convenient and fully automatic energy saving in any household by allowing the climate comfort zone
(temperature, humidity, amount of circulated air, incoming sunlight) drift away from a pre-defined zone of the resident's, when the household is not occupied. Furthermore, the energy control system will switch off all nonessential energy users e.g. TV, PC, DVD, entertainment centre, electric tooth brush and etc. when no one is around to use them. At the same time, the energy control system pays attention to possible return of any resident to ensure that the climate comfort zone is restored before arrival and ensure that the electric equipment is ready to use again. The essence being that the energy saving is convenient and does not cause any lack of comfort for the residents.
Additional to the resident's location, travelling speed and the time and date, the energy control system may combine the ambient environmental conditions, the resident's location information and the indoor environmental conditions to adjust the indoor temperature and also adjust other environmental parameters, like humidity, amount of circulated and/or re-circulated air to control the indoor air pollution.
The energy control system can be installed in houses, apartments, small offices/commercial buildings, or any other place where an improved energy reduction may be obtained by tracking the users of the place, compared to for example an energy consumption pre-programmed in time.
The energy control system can be split up into independent units or incorporated into one single, combined unit.
In an additional or alternative embodiment of the present invention, the system comprises peak load management.
Since peaks in the local, regional and national energy consumption are predictable through historic data, the energy control system ensures lowering of the temperature of the household before the peaks occur, perhaps by some offset point temperature predeterminded or optionally being calculated based on parameters such as the time for raising the temperature back to the initial value and the distance and e.g. velocity of the inhabitants relative to the household, and the external conditions such as internal and external humidity, external temperature and weather conditions, cloudiness etc.
In this embodiment the system may comprise means for storing energy in any manner as known in the art such as batteries, such means shall in the following in general be referred to as energy reservoirs. The system then comprises a storage management system able to ensure that energy is stored in the energy reservoirs prior to the peak load, and then used during the peak load period, thereby reducing the load on the power grid. This will reduce the load peaks, and give a more evenly spread electricity consumption. Further, it will reduce the amount of standby power plant needed by the energy companies; it will reduce the end user's electricity bill by reducing the need for electricity in peak periods, where electricity is very expensive.
For short and unpredictable peaks, the storage management system can be allowed to overrule the energy control system temporarily turning of non-essential energy using devices, but also more essential energy using devices such as fridge, freezer, oven, electric heaters to respond to the peak.
Figures:
Fig. 1 : Schematic view of the controller according to the invention
Detailed description
Fig. 1 describes the basic idea of the invention, where four users (1 ) of one or a plural of energy consuming devices (4), the users (4) also referred to as residents (1 ) of a house (2), are at positions which are distant from the house (2). 'House' is to be understood as any place where energy consuming devices (4) may be present. Each resident has a position identification device, such as a cell phone with GPS. The positions of the residents (1 ) are identified by tracking or tracing their position identification devices, e.g. by means of GPS positioned therein, or by simple triangulation to identify the position of the position identification devices relative to the antennas, as done by the telephone companies as a standard.
In the following the control of indoor temperature is used as an example, but any energy consuming device, and any combination of any number of energy consuming devices, also applies to the invention.
The device or devices (4) to be controlled or regulated may therefore be a HVAC system, but could alternatively or additionally be for example a TV, radio etc.
The indoor temperature is registered by a sensor. The energy control system comprises a controller (3) connected to all the residents (1) position identification devices enabling the controller (3) to alter the temperature, when the house is not occupied.
The controller (3) is simple to use and install, and may preferably be battery powered. A built-in radio frequency transmitter sends information to e.g. the radiator or floor heating thermostats all over the house (2).
Knowing the position of the residents (1) at any given time also makes it possible to predict residents (1) travelling speeds, and comparing the last known positions to the present locations, enabling the controller (3) to adjust not only the temperature of the house, but also the time in which the offset is increased or decreased. The distance from the house to the nearest resident is used to determine the offset of the controller (3) ensuring that the indoor temperature is always at the desired level, when the house is occupied.
The use of individual controllers (3) makes it possible to keep different temperatures in the house (2) and still benefit from the energy savings by offsetting the temperature in the house (2) when it is not occupied, the controllers (3) will just offset from different temperatures.
As the controller (3) always knows the position of each household resident (1 ), then no programming is necessary, the controller (3) will alter the temperature accordingly.
The controller (3) in a preferred embodiment learns (possible adaptively) the basic patterns of behaviour of the residents (1 ), enabling it with some degree of certainty to predict a following movement of a resident (1) given a specific behaviour, especially when the resident(s) arrive within some predetermined distance of the house (2). A plural of such basic patterns will be created, or mapped, for each resident (1 ), where such a map or basic pattern is a plural of data sets, where a data set as at least position(s) of the residents(s) (1 ) and the time (at day, possible also the calendar date). Optionally the estimated velocity of the resident(s) (1 ) also is included in the data(s) where the new data set(s) combined with at least one earlier resident data set (the at least two data sets) is used to choose to which of the established maps or basic patterns of the resident(s) (1 ) the at least two data sets makes the best fit, using this map or basic pattern to estimate the following behaviour and thereby when the resident is expected to arrive back to the house (2).
The energy control system, or the controller (3) of the energy control system, always monitors the resident's location at a pre-determined frequency, being the frequency at which data sets are being established; this frequency will gradually be reduced over time to a minimum as the energy control system device learns and creates the maps or resident's basic patterns of behaviur. This frequency will be increased when residents changes their basic pattern or just when they divert significantly from any of the known maps or basic patterns of behaviour, and will decrease again when a new pattern is learned or mapped, or the resident falls back to the previous or another of the basic patterns or maps. This feature will prolong the standby time of their position identification devices, like cell phones (GPS device or similar).
A plural of such predetermined distances to the house (2) may be defined, also called zones, possibly with individual zones being defined for each resident (1), and possibly determined automatically from their typical basic behaviours. These zones have individual different distances from the house (2) and may be used to establish how to weight the maps and/or predictions of behaviours, so that they are given an increasing weight or importance for a decreasing distance to the house (2).
A number of additional parameters may be included into the algorithm, such as any calendar and time data, or external or outdoor environmental conditions (6) (temperature, humidity, rainy conditions, time of day, time of month, time of year etc.), the indoor environmental conditions (7) (temperature, humidity etc.), also being used as feedback parameters, and predetermined (user predetermined) indoor set points (5), such as the preferred indoor temperature set point. Among the environmental conditions (6) and (7) could be air temperature and humidity, where such parameters can be used by an adaptive regulator to predict the time needed to for example re-cool/heat the house to the set point (5), and in general being parts of an algorithm being dynamic in time, the adjustments of the device(s) (4) depending as well on the behaviours of the residents (1) and on the surrounding indoor and outdoor conditions, and in a more advanced embodiment, also for example on the weather forecast possibly received from the internet.
As an example, the energy control system thermostat will regulate the temperature up or down (relative to a set point) according to the outdoor temperature, when all residents are away from household - and thereby enable energy savings. The off-set of temperature is regulated according to the shortest distance of resident to household combined with the maps learned by the energy control system device - ensuring that a set point comfort temperature is reached before return of any household resident.
The system may further take other ambient environmental conditions like rain, snow, wind, humidity, into consideration, increasing the predictability of the time needed to reach the indoor comfort environment, hence increasing the efficiency of the energy usage.
Other non-limiting examples of applications of the energy control system of the invention could be used is:
Regulating indoor lighting according to the amount of incoming sunlight. This will help save energy by actively increasing or decreasing the amount of reflected sunlight in relation to a more efficient cooling, heating of the building and optimized the indoor lighting.
Regulating of thermal load and the amount of air pollution (gases and the like given off by devices (4) for example when cooking in an oven) in the household to optimize the HVAC system according to the outdoor temperature, and the number of resident's present in the household present. The amount of air pollution is determined by the number of persons in the house and the number of electrical equipment work. The energy control system can therefore regulate the air pollution by controlling the circulated, re-circulated air and turn off non-essential stand- by equipment (TV, PC, DVD, entertainment centre, electric tooth brush etc).
The energy control system may comprise micro switches, which can also be used to start and stop both essential and non-essential electric equipment fully automatically or by remote activation (e.g. from cell phone), where such equipment devices (4) could be washing machines, pre-heat pool etc..
In an further advanced embodiment of the invention, the energy control system comprises a peak load manager (8) combined with the energy control system controller (3) , where the peak load manager (8) controls an energy reservoir device (9) supporting minimizing peak load disturbance on the electricity grid. This is done, regardless if the household is occupied or not. The temperature of the household is decreased or increased, depending on outdoor conditions; prior to the peak (predictable peaks).By doing this, the household can maintain a comfortable indoor climate for a longer period of time increasing the on/off hysteresis, using the household as an energy accumulator.
In case of unpredictable peaks on the power grid, the non-essential standby equipment can be turned off for a longer time frame and essential equipment (freezer, refrigerator, AC, etc.) for a short time frame, thereby reducing the load on the electricity grid.
Any number of imaginable devices and systems may be controlled and/or regulated by the energy control system of the present invention.
One example is that the energy control system may automatically ensure the switching on of the burglar alarm. As an additional feature, the energy control system may comprise a 'family finder* that can provide the location of any resident's cell phone upon request.
The separate devices of this invention are preferably standard devices as they are known in the art, such as the controller (3) and the peak load manager (8) preferably being computer micro chips with a software, and the energy reservoir devices (9) preferably are batteries of any kind known in the art. The needed data transfers, such as information's and instructions for the devices (4), the controller (8), the peak load manager (8) etc. may be by wire or wireless, and may be transferred by the telephone net or by internet or any other known system for transferring such data.