2 Votes

Smart IoT-based HVAC System

Team Leader :

Currently Coal and Natural-Gas fired plants account for more than 55% of the total energy produced in the United States, which is not is a non-renewable form of energy but also accounts for a lot of carbon emissions. Transitioning to renewable and carbon-free energy sources completely is going to take at-least a few more decades. In the meantime the certain methods can be taken to reduce the energy consumption, which will reduce the carbon emissions by a huge extent.

Currently in the USA, an average of 50% of the energy is consumed in the HVAC (Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system. The proposed system aims to reduce this energy consumption by at-least 50% by using IOT sensors and other actuators to in each room of the house for enabling a decentralized HVAC system as per requirement.

The idea is to develop a smart IoT-based HVAC for domestic use. Currently the HVAC system at homes is centralized, and is controlled using a single thermostat. This means that the entire house is either heated or cooled at the same time which at most times is completely unnecessary, like during the night times, when only the bedroom needs to heated or cooled where the person is sleeping. A lot of energy is being wasted for heating or cooling rest of the apartment.

The proposed system will have an IoT sensors and ventilation management system installed in each room. The user can set the desired temperature for each room through an app or through a control board. The temperature can also be set for a certain time range. The IoT sensors will monitor the ambient and the target temperature of the room, and will open or close the ventilation panes for that particular room. This way the HVAC system’s can be target for each room and also for a particular time range (for example: cooling the bedroom only during the night). This targeted and limited operation of the HVAC system will result in a lot of energy savings, which will eventually bring down the carbon emissions.

The proposed system will use only IoT sensors and an automated ventilation open-close actuating system, which can be easily mass produced and readily installed by the user. This system can be used globally to address the carbon-emission at a much larger scale.

Inspiration

The main motivation comes when I realized about the impact the that global warming is having on the wildlife and on several ecosystems. It is projected that many wildlife species like polar-bears, penguins etc will go extinct in the next three decades, if we continue on a path of the current carbon emissions. If we were to have carbon-neutral energy consumption by 2050 then we need to start taking actions immediately as it is going to be a slow and steady transition to build up a new infrastructure to meet the energy demands of the ever-growing population in a carbon-neutral way. Although developing carbon-neutral energy sources is important but the using the energy efficiently is also of equal importance. By optimizing our energy usage we can see immediate impacts on energy consumption and carbon emissions. This can be done by first identifying the areas which use the maximum energy and identifying loss or inefficient usage. This is where I identified the inefficiency of the modern day centralized HVAC systems. The proposed Smart IOT based HVAC System is expected to reduce the domestic energy consumption by atleast 50% which will result in a significant impact on the carbon-emission reduction.

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