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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

VOLTTRON Modular Framework: Enabling flexible and scalable deployment solutions

VOLTTRON ™ is an open-source platform for distributed sensing and control. The platform provides services for collecting and storing data from buildings and devices and provides an environment for developing applications which interact with that data. The platform allows developers to build out their use cases by utilizing these frameworks and integrating new capabilities. To simplify the deployment of systems built on VOLTTRON, a new way of organizing the codebase is being explored. This document details these efforts through a new code repository layout for the VOLTTRON platform and services, and how this new layout provides targeted deployments using standard python deployment packages (wheels). In addition, this paper will discuss the development of third-party agents and how they can be integrated within the VOLTTRON ecosystem. Finally, we will discuss core platform development and direction for the modularized version of VOLTTRON.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

DER as a service-ecoLong and VOLTTRON (Abstract)

The project goal is to commercialize the VOLTTRON-hosted “DER as a Service” (DaaS) application and make it an “out-of-the-box” solution for ecoLong to use as a secure residential energy management system that allows 1.) distributed energy resources (DERs) to participate in wholesale markets and provide services to the grid and 2.) intelligently control the energy in the residential buildings to the desired level while maintaining occupancy comfort. The product will be field deployed onto multiple Solar Liberty sites in New York state to demonstrate wide-scale participation of DERs in wholesale markets to provide services to the grid and validate the effectiveness of the solution. The integrated management of DERs and buildings increases the penetration of solar resources by managing its variability, providing grid services, and solving the evening ramping challenges. Ultimately, the DaaS platform will make buildings and DERs smarter by unlocking grid-interactive efficient buildings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Remote Deployment and Setup of VOLTTRON Instances

The goal of this project is to increase the pool of people who can install and configure applications in the Intellimation platform. This will be accomplished with a joint development effort between Intellimation and PNNL to create a set of services to simplify the process for the onsite client as well as the Intellimation staff at a centralized location. Intellimation’s tagging capability, hosted in their cloud, will be leveraged to create an autoconfiguration process for selected PNNL applications such as Intelligent Load Control and AIRCX. The results of the configuration process will be sent to Intellimation field units which host the applications locally. This will allow these applications to be configured remotely and with greatly reduced effort on the part of Intellimation staff. Consequently, this will enable a greater usage of these applications and greater impact to energy efficiency than would be possible without this effort. The use of these newly developed services would allow Intellimation to reduce the cost of installation and allow them to offer the service to new and existing clients.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2023

An open-source framework for simulation-based testing of buildings control strategies

Here this paper presents a simulation framework for evaluating building control strategies (BCSs), developed with VOLTTRON, an opensource platform that integrates data, devices, and systems for sensing and control applications, and is based on co-simulation interfaces. It realizes an integrated environment for both testing and deploying BCSs, thereby eliminating the need for having a dedicated implementation of BCS for testing. For the first time, this framework provides critical functionalities, including scalable communication management and time-drive simulation advance, i.e., advancing the simulation based on clock time. We applied this framework to evaluating two BCSs from ASHRAE Guideline 36-2008 and ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2019. The evaluation results show that those BCSs primarily benefit the heating operation by reducing gas usage but yield insignificant savings in electricity consumption. The results also emphasize the importance of tuning the parameters of the BCSs to achieve better performances.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

Demand Flexibility Controls Library using Semantics (DFLEXLIBS) v0.1

DFLEXLIBS is a library/repository of HVAC-based demand flexibility control applications developed using Python. The library is based on portable control applications that exclusively contain control logic and are abstract to building details, such as point names and communication protocols. The library leverages semantic models and control platform-oriented interfaces to configure and run the controls in specific buildings. To date, the library contains two applications and two interfaces (for BOPTEST and VOLTTRON) and has been demonstrated in five heterogeneous buildings.

Paul, Lazlo↗
DOE OSTI2024

OpenFacadeControl: enabling integration of automated facades with other building systems

Automated facades are, for the most part, still considered as separate from other building systems throughout the design, installation, commissioning, operation, and maintenance cycle. This takes place despite the fact that their energy and comfort performance are deeply interlinked with the operation of lighting and HVAC systems. Over the last two decades, research has shown that there are significant advantages from operating facades as an integrated system with the rest of the building. Nevertheless, significant barriers prevent this type of integration becoming more common. One of them is the lack of a platform that is inexpensive to implement and that easily allows the practical implementation of integrated control algorithms across fenestration and other building systems, using a variety of communications protocols. This is particularly challenging when automated facades are installed in existing buildings, where interaction with legacy building systems that were installed over the past lifetime of the building can require a high degree of interoperability. OpenFacadeControl (OFC) is an open-source controls framework aimed at unified control of facades and other building systems, including the sharing of third-party sensor information. Through leveraging the Volttron controls platform, it allows the integration of systems and sensors that are manufactured by different companies and that use different communications protocols into an ensemble that functions as a single system. OFC is designed to enable integrated control algorithms of varying degrees of complexity, ranging from simple, heuristic controls to more sophisticated approaches like model-predictive control. Use of a research version to test advanced lighting and shading strategies in a full-scale experimental testbed has demonstrated the ease of deploying advanced control solutions using OpenFacadeControl. This paper presents the structure of OpenFacadeControl and a demonstration case showing the use of OFC in laboratory tests of advanced lighting and fenestration controls that coordinated motorized shades communicating via the BACnet building communications standard and lights communicating via internet-protocol-based application programming interface (API), based on the readings of a shared light level sensor communicating via a different API.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Energy Efficiency Analysis and Grid Service Results for Commercial Buildings using the VOLTRON IoT Platform

In fiscal year 2021 (FY21), the Commercial Buildings Integration Program (CBI) within the Building Technologies Office (BTO), funded PNNL to conduct a field evaluation of the AIRCx and ILC using an Internet-of-Things (IoT) platform, VOLTTRON. The primary goal of the project is to show that software solutions deployed and delivered through an IoT-platform can identify energy efficiency opportunities and manage peak load (beyond the traditional demand response) in commercial buildings. There are also two secondary goals: 1) show that the energy efficiency solutions will result in identification of significant savings opportunities (10% to 30%) as well as energy cost reductions (10% to 15%) by managing the peak load in commercial buildings, and 2) show that an IoT-based software solution is more cost-effective compared to a manual process in meeting the Re-tuning/retro commissioning (RCx) mandates and there is a pathway for broader adoption of this approach. This report provides AIRCx and ILC results for two building located in District of Columbia managed by the energy service provider Intellimation.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2026

Generalizable Web User Interface for Scalable and Streamlined Deployment of Building Energy Management Systems in Small and Medium-Sized Commercial Buildings

Small and medium-sized commercial buildings (SMCBs) comprise 94% of US commercial buildings yet face significant barriers to implementing building energy management systems despite advances in smart device technology. Existing solutions present critical limitations: cloud-based API solutions simplify deployment but create vendor lock-in constraints; commercial integrated software solutions ensure compatibility via standardized protocols but require substantial cost and technical expertise; open-source IoT platforms offer cost-effective vendor independence but provide insufficient standardized protocol support for commercial building automation. This research presents a generalizable web user interface framework that bridges the gap between evolving smart device capabilities and lagging software infrastructure for SMCBs. The proposed system integrates VOLTTRON open-source middleware with an automated configuration converter that transforms unified specifications written in YAML, a human-readable data-serialization format, into system-specific files, streamlining manual setup processes. The vendor-agnostic architecture supports industry-standard protocols (BACnet and Modbus) and semantic building models while providing adaptive web interfaces that dynamically adjust to various building configurations. Demonstrations through simulation-based testing and a field deployment show automatic interface adaptation across heterogeneous HVAC systems and multizone monitoring. The automated configuration converter also substantially reduces labor-intensive setup.

Chung, Jihoon [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000184880815)↗
DOE OSTI2026

Simulation-Based Validation of An Open-Source, Scalable Framework for Building Energy Management in Small and Medium-Sized Commercial Buildings

Abstract: Small and medium-sized commercial buildings (SMCBs) represent 94% of U.S. commercial buildings but encounter substantial obstacles in adopting Building Energy Management (BEM) systems. Current approaches exhibit fundamental limitations: vendor-specific API platforms restrict interoperability through proprietary ecosystems; commercial automation software demands extensive technical expertise and licensing costs; open-source IoT solutions lack native support for building automation protocols and semantic models. This paper introduces a configuration-driven web interface framework addressing the gap between smart device advancements and accessible BEM software infrastructure for SMCBs. The framework leverages VOLTTRON middleware integrated with an automated converter that processes unified YAML configurations into heterogeneous system files, reducing required configuration artifacts from six separate files to a single unified specification. The system architecture enables vendor-agnostic operation through BACnet and Modbus protocols while supporting semantic building model integration via automated Brick Schema parsing. Configuration-driven interfaces automatically adapt to diverse HVAC types without custom development. Simulation-based validation using BOPTEST demonstrates automatic interface generation between fan coil and hydronic systems, with the automated converter successfully generating all platform-specific outputs from the single YAML input. The result demonstrates the framework's capability to streamline BEM system deployment through reduced configuration complexity. This work bridges simulation capabilities with operational deployment, demonstrating how virtual testbeds validate generalizable software frameworks for real-world building automation.

Chung, Jihoon [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000184880815)↗