Jörg Wollert
Fachhochschule Aachen, Germany
Title: Radio duct energetic retrofitting of ventilation: an air-conditioning system for existing buildings via radio-based control
Biography
Biography: Jörg Wollert
Abstract
Regarding primary energy consumption, the building sector is the largest single sector. The energetic retrofit of constituent facilities offers a huge potential concerning current climate protection objectives. Energy-distributing and energy-producing units are often controlled in a non-optimized way. The energy footprint can be reduced with a demand-driven operation, but this requires a rigorous energetic monitoring. The needed communication infrastructure rarely exists in constituent building making a retrofit extremely arduous. Radio duct deals with the development of components which allow a Wi-Fi-based communication for actuators and sensors with the aim of monitoring, controlling and optimizing the energy consumption of non–residential building. By using available air ducts as a non-optimized waveguide to transmit TCP/IP packets, the transmission bypasses walls and the bundling effect serves to achieve higher transmission distances compared to open area transmission - while interference from external devices is blocked off. The preproduction models are based on the ESP8266 microcontroller, acting as independent IoT devices with the functionality of building Ad hoc networks. Radio duct-modules allow for an easy retrofit, particularly since most parts of the air distribution system can be utilized. The air-duct-radio-technology is strongly resource-friendly and cost-efficient.