Researchers at Concordia University are looking for ways to make the YUL Montréal–Trudeau International Airport more energy efficient using predictive controls without sacrificing passenger comfort.
Using real-life data collected through sensors installed at different terminals, Concordia’s Volt-Age program uses analytics tools to identify patterns and inefficiencies that can later be used to implement adaptive control systems to adjust the heating, cooling, and ventilation automatically.
The project—a collaboration between the airport and the university—comes at a perfect time for Mohamed Ouf, the program’s lead researcher, as YUL Montréal–Trudeau is currently undergoing major expansions.
“Airports combine lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning with constantly shifting occupancy. That makes them ideal for studying how buildings can operate smarter.”
For Harry Vallianos, a postdoctoral fellow working on the project, the aim is to build models that can predict optimal energy use by learning from the behavioural data collected.
“When we have that model that we’re sure that connects to reality and properly reflects the behavior of the building, then we can use it to predictively control the building using weather forecasts and occupancy forecasts to make sure that it will precondition the building before the occupants even feel that it’s too cold or too hot,” said Vallianos.
To ensure that the project places humans first, researchers like Concordia PhD student Ana Victoria Palma Florido also use questionnaires as part of their field measurements to get an insight into behavioural habits and comfort levels.
“This essentially helps us understand what are the main factors that influence thermal comfort within the airport terminal and how we can optimize the indoor environment in such a way to achieve energy efficiency, as well as ensuring that staff and occupants alike are still comfortable within the indoor environment,” said Florido.
Research on energy efficiency is especially important now, says Ouf, because, while most Canadians feel that the country is energy secure, the increasing demand combined with a push towards electrification can lead to an excessive load on the electrical grid during peak time—especially in winter—resulting in a need to import energy or use fossil fuels to meet the demand.
To address this problem, his team is looking into implementing control strategies in the airport to conserve energy for when the grid is close to reaching its maximum capacity.
“Sometimes, I try to simplify it as we look at the building as a potential battery,” Ouf said. “The building itself is a battery, in a sense, that can store heat, that can store energy, that could be used at times when we’re expecting those peaks. And that’s for short periods, but this is actually what’s critical for those times.”
While the project’s focus is the Montreal airport, researchers’ findings on smart controls, renewable energy integration and demand management strategies can be applied to other large buildings with changing environments across the country, like office towers, hospitals and universities.
At the end of the day, buildings have a similar structure. So we look at how we can learn from this in order to have strategies that can work for other types of buildings, like offices and even industrial buildings and so on. And that’s the key.”
The project is expected to continue until 2030, with researchers hoping that the showcased results, once the airport construction is finished, can help turn Montreal into a pioneering city for energy-efficient design.
