Daniel Bayer - Chair of Computer Science III

Phone	(0931) 31-89632
E-Mail	daniel.bayer@uni-wuerzburg.de
Room	01.019 (Building M4)
Address	Lehrstuhl für Informatik III Am Hubland 97074 Würzburg Germany

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Research Interests

Daniel Bayer works as a research assistant at the Chair of Computer Science (Modelling and Simulation). He first studied mathematics with a Bachelor of Science degree, then computer science at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.
His work focuses on the research project of DigiSWM. Here, one of the central goals is to combine extensive energy data with AI methods to simulate and evaluate new energy services.

His research interests include digital twins and data-driven simulations of local energy systems, including the building sector, to ensure long-term sustainable and climate-neutral energy supply through the optimal dimensioning and control of heating and energy supply systems. He also deals with the topics of multi-agent reinforcement learning and sustainable computing.

Research projects

Recent Publications

2023[ to top ]

Modeling of Annual and Daily Electricity Demand of Retrofitted Heat Pumps based on Gas Smart Meter Data. Bayer, Daniel R.; Pruckner, Marco. In Proceedings of the 10th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation, of BuildSys ’23. ACM, 2023.
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@inproceedings{bayer2023modeling, author = {Bayer, Daniel R. and Pruckner, Marco}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 10th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation}, keywords = {pruckner}, month = 11, publisher = {ACM}, series = {BuildSys ’23}, title = {Modeling of Annual and Daily Electricity Demand of Retrofitted Heat Pumps based on Gas Smart Meter Data}, year = 2023 }

%0 Conference Paper %1 bayer2023modeling %A Bayer, Daniel R. %A Pruckner, Marco %B Proceedings of the 10th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation %D 2023 %I ACM %R 10.1145/3600100.3623745 %T Modeling of Annual and Daily Electricity Demand of Retrofitted Heat Pumps based on Gas Smart Meter Data %U http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3600100.3623745
A digital twin of a local energy system based on real smart meter data. Bayer, Daniel; Pruckner, Marco. In Energy Informatics, 6(1). Springer Science and Business Media {LLC}, 2023.
- [ Abstract ]
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- [ EndNote ]
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The steadily increasing usage of smart meters generates a valuable amount of high-resolution data about the individual energy consumption and production of local energy systems. Private households install more and more photovoltaic systems, battery storage and big consumers like heat pumps. Thus, our vision is to augment these collected smart meter time series of a complete system (e.g., a city, town or complex institutions like airports) with simulatively added previously named components. We, therefore, propose a novel digital twin of such an energy system based solely on a complete set of smart meter data including additional building data. Based on the additional geospatial data, the twin is intended to represent the addition of the abovementioned components as realistically as possible. Outputs of the twin can be used as a decision support for either system operators where to strengthen the system or for individual households where and how to install photovoltaic systems and batteries. Meanwhile, the first local energy system operators had such smart meter data of almost all residential consumers for several years. We acquire those of an exemplary operator and discuss a case study presenting some features of our digital twin and highlighting the value of the combination of smart meter and geospatial data.

@article{2023_Bayer_DT_LocalEnergySystem, abstract = {The steadily increasing usage of smart meters generates a valuable amount of high-resolution data about the individual energy consumption and production of local energy systems. Private households install more and more photovoltaic systems, battery storage and big consumers like heat pumps. Thus, our vision is to augment these collected smart meter time series of a complete system (e.g., a city, town or complex institutions like airports) with simulatively added previously named components. We, therefore, propose a novel digital twin of such an energy system based solely on a complete set of smart meter data including additional building data. Based on the additional geospatial data, the twin is intended to represent the addition of the abovementioned components as realistically as possible. Outputs of the twin can be used as a decision support for either system operators where to strengthen the system or for individual households where and how to install photovoltaic systems and batteries. Meanwhile, the first local energy system operators had such smart meter data of almost all residential consumers for several years. We acquire those of an exemplary operator and discuss a case study presenting some features of our digital twin and highlighting the value of the combination of smart meter and geospatial data.}, author = {Bayer, Daniel and Pruckner, Marco}, journal = {Energy Informatics}, keywords = {pruckner}, month = {03}, number = 1, publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media {LLC}}, title = {A digital twin of a local energy system based on real smart meter data}, volume = 6, year = 2023 }

%0 Journal Article %1 2023_Bayer_DT_LocalEnergySystem %A Bayer, Daniel %A Pruckner, Marco %D 2023 %I Springer Science and Business Media {LLC} %J Energy Informatics %N 1 %R 10.1186/s42162-023-00263-6 %T A digital twin of a local energy system based on real smart meter data %U https://energyinformatics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42162-023-00263-6 %V 6 %X The steadily increasing usage of smart meters generates a valuable amount of high-resolution data about the individual energy consumption and production of local energy systems. Private households install more and more photovoltaic systems, battery storage and big consumers like heat pumps. Thus, our vision is to augment these collected smart meter time series of a complete system (e.g., a city, town or complex institutions like airports) with simulatively added previously named components. We, therefore, propose a novel digital twin of such an energy system based solely on a complete set of smart meter data including additional building data. Based on the additional geospatial data, the twin is intended to represent the addition of the abovementioned components as realistically as possible. Outputs of the twin can be used as a decision support for either system operators where to strengthen the system or for individual households where and how to install photovoltaic systems and batteries. Meanwhile, the first local energy system operators had such smart meter data of almost all residential consumers for several years. We acquire those of an exemplary operator and discuss a case study presenting some features of our digital twin and highlighting the value of the combination of smart meter and geospatial data.

2022[ to top ]

Enhancing the Performance of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Controlling HVAC Systems. Bayer, Daniel; Pruckner, Marco. In 2022 IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability (SusTech), pp. 187–194. 2022.
- [ Abstract ]
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- [ EndNote ]
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Systems for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) of buildings are traditionally controlled by a rule-based approach. In order to reduce the energy consumption and the environmental impact of HVAC systems more advanced control methods such as reinforcement learning are promising. Reinforcement learning (RL) strategies offer a good alternative, as user feedback can be integrated more easily and presence can also be incorporated. Moreover, multi-agent RL approaches scale well and can be generalized. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent RL framework based on existing work that learns reducing on one hand energy consumption by optimizing HVAC control and on the other hand user feedback by occupants about uncomfortable room temperatures. Second, we show how to reduce training time required for proper RL-agent-training by using parameter sharing between the multiple agents and apply different pretraining techniques. Results show that our framework is capable of reducing the energy by around 6% when controlling a complete building or 8% for a single room zone. The occupants complaints are acceptable or even better compared to a rule-based baseline. Additionally, our performance analysis show that the training time can be drastically reduced by using parameter sharing.

@inproceedings{9794179, abstract = {Systems for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) of buildings are traditionally controlled by a rule-based approach. In order to reduce the energy consumption and the environmental impact of HVAC systems more advanced control methods such as reinforcement learning are promising. Reinforcement learning (RL) strategies offer a good alternative, as user feedback can be integrated more easily and presence can also be incorporated. Moreover, multi-agent RL approaches scale well and can be generalized. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent RL framework based on existing work that learns reducing on one hand energy consumption by optimizing HVAC control and on the other hand user feedback by occupants about uncomfortable room temperatures. Second, we show how to reduce training time required for proper RL-agent-training by using parameter sharing between the multiple agents and apply different pretraining techniques. Results show that our framework is capable of reducing the energy by around 6% when controlling a complete building or 8% for a single room zone. The occupants complaints are acceptable or even better compared to a rule-based baseline. Additionally, our performance analysis show that the training time can be drastically reduced by using parameter sharing.}, author = {Bayer, Daniel and Pruckner, Marco}, booktitle = {2022 IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability (SusTech)}, keywords = {pruckner}, month = {04}, pages = {187-194}, title = {Enhancing the Performance of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Controlling HVAC Systems}, year = 2022 }

%0 Conference Paper %1 9794179 %A Bayer, Daniel %A Pruckner, Marco %B 2022 IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability (SusTech) %D 2022 %P 187-194 %R 10.1109/SusTech53338.2022.9794179 %T Enhancing the Performance of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Controlling HVAC Systems %U https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9794179/ %X Systems for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) of buildings are traditionally controlled by a rule-based approach. In order to reduce the energy consumption and the environmental impact of HVAC systems more advanced control methods such as reinforcement learning are promising. Reinforcement learning (RL) strategies offer a good alternative, as user feedback can be integrated more easily and presence can also be incorporated. Moreover, multi-agent RL approaches scale well and can be generalized. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent RL framework based on existing work that learns reducing on one hand energy consumption by optimizing HVAC control and on the other hand user feedback by occupants about uncomfortable room temperatures. Second, we show how to reduce training time required for proper RL-agent-training by using parameter sharing between the multiple agents and apply different pretraining techniques. Results show that our framework is capable of reducing the energy by around 6% when controlling a complete building or 8% for a single room zone. The occupants complaints are acceptable or even better compared to a rule-based baseline. Additionally, our performance analysis show that the training time can be drastically reduced by using parameter sharing.

Daniel Bayer M. Sc.

Research Interests

Research projects

Recent Publications

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