Application of multi-agent control system to building energy and environment control field: A review

The definitions and key characteristics of multi-agents in the main literature are discussed. The standards, general frameworks and programming languages of multi-agent control systems applied to the building energy and environment control field are reviewed. The comparison and discussion about the system structure, coordination mechanism and optimization methods of the multi-agent control system are summarized. The research of recent 20 years is categorized into four groups according to the application scenario, e.g., the building equipment system optimization control, the energy and environment optimization control in single buildings, the building and external energy network interaction optimization control, and the building cluster and external energy network optimization control. At the end of the article, some critical issues that need further research are discussed, such as time series optimization, online learning, uncertainty, stability and convergence in the application of multi-agent control systems to the building energy and environment control field.