Agent technology to improve building energy efficiency and occupant comfort

Global warming, caused largely by energy consumption, has become a major problem. During the last decades the introduction of energy saving technologies has strongly reduced energy consumption of buildings. Users’ preferences and behavior have become central to building services control strategies. Achieving synergy between end users and buildings is the ultimate in intelligent comfort control. This new comfort control technology, based on use of the latest ICT development in agent technology, can further reduce energy consumption of buildings. This paper reviews Multi-Agent Intelligent Internet-mediated control strategies and combines the most useful insights into a new technology called Forgiving Agent Comfort Technology (FACT). The University of Technology Eindhoven is developing this FACT technology further into a new concept.