This research area focuses on the design, modelling, and control of energy systems for buildings and urban districts. Our work advances methodologies for efficient indoor environmental control and integrated energy management, with a particular focus on novel sensing strategies, control architectures, occupant behaviour, and advanced, data-driven, predictive control algorithms. We create tailored models of buildings and energy systems, from simplified, optimization-oriented representations, to detailed, high-fidelity models suitable for testing and validation.  In addition, we design decision-support tools to enable optimal design and configuration of multi-energy systems, identifying the most effective combinations of energy generation, conversion, and storage technologies.

Navitas FlexLab:

Three adjacent rooms, with extremely flexible energy and control equipment. The laboratory possesses high research flexibility, allowing reconfiguration of the heat emission system to use: i) radiator-based heating ii) floor-heating, iii) controllable mechanical ventilation and iv) radiative ceiling (see Figure 1). Supply temperature, water and air flow rates can be individually managed and remotely controlled by any bespoke algorithm. The rooms are extensively monitored with indoor environment sensors (temperature, humidity, CO₂) and HVAC system data (energy, system states),  with historical data available for the past 3 years.

• Miniquin (Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond Nova), 2024-2027: The project aims to develop a novel sensor device for buildings' thermal control that mimics the human body's thermal processes and estimates thermal sensation. It is envisioned that this signal is used as feedback in building control systems in place of commonly employed air temperature sensors, enabling better control, and further uptake of sustainable technologies such as automated window openings, shading, or ceiling fans.
• Sociotechnological Breakthrough of Thermal Energy Storage - a new Approach of Constructive Technology Assessment (Swiss National Science Foundation), 2021- 2026: Although various technological solutions exist for Seasonal Thermal Energy Storage, they are still hardly used, especially in Switzerland. The SOTES project aims to close this gap between the availability and use of these technological solutions with an interdisciplinary approach, combining social and technical aspects. At the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering at Aarhus University, we investigate in this consortium how design optimization methods for energy systems, in particular those integrating seasonal thermal energy storage technologies, can include the objective of social acceptance as part of their formulation.
• PreHeat (Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Programme), 2019 – 2022:   The purpose of this development project is to demonstrate the technology for a novel state of the art space-heating concept. Recent research has demonstrated that existing residential buildings can be utilized as thermal “batteries” to balance future energy systems based on renewable energy production. The technology combines a novel control algorithm developed by AU with existing clamp-on sensors and a software platform developed by ReMoni, and on-market third party radiator thermostats.