Design of Fuzzy Controller for a Hybrid Active/Passive Cooling System in Smart Homes with a Windcatcher

Globally, most building energy consumption is associated with heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems (HVAC). Building energy consumption increased from 115 EJ in 2010 to nearly 135 EJ in 2021, accounting for 30% of global final energy consumption. In 2021, electricity will account for approximately 35% of building energy use, up from 30% in 2010. Space cooling, in particular, saw the greatest increase in demand across all building end uses in 2021, increasing by more than 6.5% over 2020. This study aims to set design guidelines to reduce energy consumption in building sector by proposing a hybrid active/passive cooling smart system. This can reduce energy consumed by the electricity grid by achieving natural ventilation through wind catchers. The later is a historical architectural element used in buildings to provide cross ventilation and passive cooling. The architectural modeling of the proposed system's design is conducted using Autodesk Revit. The smart controlling system is implemented with Fuzzy logic in MATLAB Simulink. Moreover, the accuracy of the system is improved by a PID tuning based on Backpropagation Neural Network. The results confirmed the effectiveness of the methodology used.