New York State has set ambitious clean energy targets, with a goal of achieving a carbon-neutral economy by 2050. Because residential and commercial buildings are significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, there is a need for innovative solutions to heat and cool buildings efficiently.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) Next Generation Buildings Innovation Challenges program aims to find those solutions, funding projects related to advanced building technologies for clean heating, air conditioning, ventilation, building envelopes and intelligent building controls. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Professor and Associate Director of Grid-Interactive Buildings at the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems (SyracuseCoE), Bing Dong recently received more than $1 million in funding through this NYSERDA program to develop intelligent building technologies.

Dong’s project, “Occupant-Centric Data-driven Controls for Multiple Energy Assets in Commercial Buildings,” will utilize physics-informed machine learning to optimize building energy systems. Using 727 E. Washington St. as a testbed, the research team will collect data from a variety of building systems – including HVAC, thermal storage, battery energy storage, and EV charging stations. They will use this information to model potential energy savings and peak load reduction. Ultimately, the team seeks to develop a plug-and-play platform structure that can be replicated in other buildings.

“With emerging energy storage technologies, future smart buildings need to know how to best optimize those technologies together with existing building systems,” says Professor Dong. “We will develop an AI-based control agent for those multi-energy assets to achieve their best performance.”

Building on SyracuseCoE’s strong industry connections, Professor Dong will partner with Taitem Engineering, Leaptran, and TRC Companies. Carrier will serve as a technical advisor. MAE faculty Jianshun “Jensen” Zhang and Ian Shapiro will serve as co-principal investigators on the project. Professor Zhang is the Executive Director of the SyracuseCoE , and Professor Shapiro is SyracuseCoE’s Associate Director of Building Science and Community Programs.

Next Generation Buildings Innovation Challenges was created to support the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 85% over the next 15 years. The program is supported by NY’s Clean Energy Fund.