IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March 2018 - 34

Scientific consensus and studies
report the burning of fossil fuels as
the single major GHG contributor.
grid of its gradually increasing load. The most urgent need is
to develop the electrical system of buildings as individual
entities, which self-generate and supply power to their loads
without depending on external sources. This implies that a
building can be visualized as a small-scale model of a grid
that houses generation and load centers within itself; hence,
the electrical network of a building may be appropriately
termed a nanogrid.
What sets these buildings apart from traditional ZEBs is
that, under normal operating conditions, the building does not
import any power from the grid or any other external source.
Thus, the term self-sustainable is an accurate description for
this category of buildings. This necessitates the development
of a control and management system that can govern the flow
of power within the building so as to achieve the objective of
self-sustainability. Growing research in the field of smart cit-
ies has provided the necessary information and communica-
tion technology infrastructure required for the development
of buildings as smart entities [20]. Figure 3 provides an
example of an energy-efficient, i.e., self-sustainable, building
and its necessary infrastructure. To achieve this objective, the
system is required to satisfactorily meet the loads with the
best possible utilization of the locally available RESs, as
depicted in Figure 3. Additionally, since the loads and gener-
ations are dynamic in nature and fluctuate throughout the
day, the challenge of energy management is difficult to over-
come. Thus, this complex interplay of power supply and

One-Third
of the GHG
Emissions

EXAMINING BEMSs
The field of BEMSs has been rigorously explored and stud-
ied by researchers over the years. Conventional BEMSs con-
cern the management and control of a building's electrical
and mechanical equipment with a focus on maximizing
energy conservation. However, the self-sustainability of
buildings has not been a primary objective in most of the
known studies. An important aspect that requires careful
consideration in the process of BEMS design is the electri-
cal environment of the buildings. Since a building includes a
large number and variety of loads along with numerous
RESs that are dispersed throughout its environment, the
problem of designing a BEMS for a self-sustainable build-
ing is multifaceted. As a result, there is a growing need to
use techniques that can efficiently accommodate distributed
and parallel processing. Since the generation in these build-
ings takes place through RESs that are inherently intermit-
tent, the power generation and storage levels tend to be
discontinuous throughout the day. The time-dependent and
capacity-constrained availability of power demonstrate the
dynamic nature of the building's electrical environment. For
the successful operation of such systems, it is imperative to
employ an effective scheme with shorter time delays; this is
achieved through the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Rus-
sell and Norving defined AI as "the study of agents that
exist in an environment and perceive and act" [21]. This
introduces the concept of agents, which may be thought of
as entities that perform autonomous actions within the spec-
ified environments in which they are placed.

40% of
Global
Resources

25% of
Global
Water

60% of
the World's
Electricity

20% of
Global
Energy
10% of
Global
GDP

demand for achieving energy independence of the building
from the grid, motivates the energy engineer to explore the
design possibilities of an efficient building energy manage-
ment system (BEMS).

The Need for
Self-Sustainable
Buildings

Employ
111 Million
People

FIGURE 2. The need for self-sustainable buildings [17]. GDP: gross
domestic product.
34 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

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MARCH 2018

FIGURE 3. An energy-efficient building.
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March 2018
