Multi-modal Building Energy Management

The energy transition from fossil energy carriers and centralized power plants towards renewable energy sources and distributed generation calls for suitable approaches supporting this change. Smart buildings adapting their inbound and outbound energy provision, i.e., their demand from as well as supply to surrounding energy systems, will be an essential part of a multi-modal future energy system. A promising way to gain additional flexibility in our energy systems is a holistic energy management approach to the provision, conversion, distribution, storage, and utilization of all energy carriers.

This thesis contributes to the field of Energy Informatics by providing, firstly, theoretical foundations of multi-energy systems, multi-modal energy management, and multi-commodity optimization, secondly, the architectural design and exemplary implementation of an automated building energy management system performing multi-modal energy management by means of multi-commodity optimization, and, finally, the evaluation of exemplary smart buildings using multi-modal building energy management systems, quantifying the expected effects of automated energy management, hybrid home appliances, and measures of demand side management in exemplary multi-energy systems.