User Comfort and Energy Efficiency in HVAC Systems by Q-learning

This study focuses on applying Q-learning techniques for an HVAC agent where the agent learns to find the optimal sequence of ventilator rate variations to satisfy user comfort and energy efficiency simultaneously. On-Off and Setpoint control methods are investigated besides the proposed control method under different occupant number. The results show the advantage of the proposed Q-learning method to keep the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), i.e., the indoor CO2 concentration, at the desired level while operating the HVAC efficiently.