MAE SEMINAR: Modeling and Control of Complex Building Energy Systems with Dr. Atul Kelkar

Abstract 

The seminar will begin with an overview of Dr. Atul Kelkar’s overall research program with a brief  description of key research projects and new research initiatives. The second part of the talk will focus  on one the work of his research team in the area of modeling and control of building energy systems. 

Buildings is one of the major sources of energy consumption in the United States and it accounts for  approximately 40% of the nation’s total energy consumption. As such, any measure that can be taken to  make buildings more energy efficient will not only greatly reduce the overall energy consumption but  also help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. The major share of building energy consumption comes  from Heating, Ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system and, as a result, control of HVAC  system has been the primary target of this research. This presentation will focus on modeling and control  of a typical HVAC system configuration. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)- DOE  Laboratory- has invested millions of dollars in designing and building a multi-agent control platform called, VOLTTRONTM, that is being deployed in medium- and large-scale commercial buildings to  enable control designers to implement custom-designed controls in building management system for  increased efficiency. This talk will discuss different modeling and control methodologies developed and  present experimental results from hardware implementation of some of these control strategies on a real  research building using VOLTTRAN platform to demonstrate the energy savings. Two different control  methodologies that will be presented include: A VOLTTRONTM based implementation of supervisory  control using multi-agent based generalized gossip algorithm and passivity-based framework using  Brayton-Moser formulation. Various simulation results will also be presented to demonstrate the energy  savings that can be accomplished in smart buildings using the proposed control methodologies.

Biography

Dr. Kelkar is a Fellow of ASME, Associate Fellow of AIAA, and Senior Member of IEEE. He is a  recipient of NSF’s prestigious CAREER award in his early faculty career. He continues to lead various  leadership activities in ASME and IEEE professional societies. He has held the positions of Associate  Editor for key ASME and IEEE journals, served on Program Committees for various IEEE and ASME  conferences, and organized and chaired several technical sessions at these conferences. His research has  led to several patents and more than 150 archival publications which include several conference and  journal articles, handbook chapters, and research monograph. His research has been in a general area of  dynamics and control with focus on modeling and control of aerospace systems, control theory, active  control of vibrations and noise, and very recently, in energy technologies. Dr. Kelkar is also a co founder of five different technology start-ups which are very successful in acquiring competitive  projects from NSF, NASA, and DoD. Three of these companies have also won awards at the state level  and have successfully commercialized technologies developed by Dr. Kelkar. His research and  entrepreneurial success has led to several newspaper and magazine articles and interviews on national  and local public radio stations and local TV stations.