The Texas A&M Smart and Connected Homes Testbed (TAM-SCHT) is located at the RELLIS campus in Bryan, Texas, United States. This testbed is used by the Building Energy and HVAC&R research group at Texas A&M University for smart home technology and smart grid applications research. Two identical homes were designed with the manufacturer to achieve different test capabilities for the lab homes. These two homes are 1,200 ft² (111 m²), have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and are equipped with removable interior walls which allow research to alter the floorplan. This smart and connected home testbed will provide capabilities to test many areas in GEB (grid-interactive efficient building) research. A local solar panel farm with an on-site battery will allow DER (distributed energy resources) research, the reconfigurable envelope will aid in advanced envelope material testing, and smart appliances in the house allow for demand response operation to be tested. The testbed provides researchers with the capability to test a wide range of building envelope (e.g., wall and windows), HVAC and hot water operation and equipment in the residential building application, and verify simulations and models.
Building Profiles
Two identical homes were designed with the manufacturer to achieve different test capabilities for the lab homes. These two homes are 1,200 ft² (111 m²), have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and are equipped with removable interior walls which allow research to alter the floorplan. The following sections will go over the specific construction characteristics of the residential homes.
Metering and Monitoring
The lab home testbed is heavily instrumented for a wide range of data collection and accurate measurements. The sensors can be grouped into different areas of interest for research purposes: building envelope and environmental data, whole house electrical metering, indoor air quality measurements, and HVAC performance.
Data Flow
The data flow of data acquisition and control is illustrated as shown in the figure below. Sensors report data to LabVIEW running on a PC, which also controls the load emulators to follow the hourly profiles. The data collected and the control signal of the lab homes will also be pushed to a cloud server to be accessed remotely.
Publications
- Firsich, Thomas, Zhiyao Yang, Fan Feng, and Zheng O’Neill. “Texas A&M Smart and Connected Homes Testbed (TAM-SCHT): An Evaluation and Demonstration Platform for Smart & Grid-interactive Technologies.” ASHRAE Transactions 128 (2022).
Contact
- Dr. Zheng O’Neill, PhD, PE
J. Mike Walker ’66 Associate Professor
J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering
Texas A&M University
Mechanical Engineering Office Building (MEOB) 326
College Station, TX, 77843
Ph: 979-845-4931 | Email: ZOneill@tamu.edu
- Thomas Firsich
Graduate Research Assistant
J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX, 77843
Email: thomasfirsich17@tamu.edu
- Dr. Zhiyao Yang, PhD
Senior Research Engineer I
J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX, 77843
Email: z.yang@tamu.edu
Sponsor