Smart Thermostats in Building Automation Systems and Smart Homes

This article surveys the current achievements concerning smart thermostats for smart homes and smart buildings and observes the level of smartness of the microclimate control systems for buildings and rooms. The article shows the results of analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of the marketed solutions and sets requirements for smart thermostat as a component of building automation system. All solutions were classified at three “smartness levels”, from zero to second, where zero level means simple manually adjusted temperature regulator, first level assumes working according the programmable schedule. The second level smart thermostat automatically generates and dynamically changes its schedule basing on the users’ activity and presence, as well as on user-defined priorities. The article sets goals for further research in the field of self-learning algorithms for smart thermostat, because it seems actual to develop a self-learning smart thermostat capable of supporting a large buildings; it should analyze user behavior and effect control both at the level of a whole building and at the level of single rooms. Keywords: smart thermostat, smart home, building automation, energy saving, control systems, controller, regulator, algorithm