US 12,281,809 B2
Building equipment selection using soft constraints
Ryan A. Baumgartner, Milwaukee, WI (US); and Ryan Craig Beaty, Milwaukee, WI (US)
Assigned to TYCO FIRE & SECURITY GMBH, Neuhausen am Rheinfall (CH)
Filed by Tyco Fire & Security GmbH, Neuhausen am Rheinfall (CH)
Filed on Nov. 4, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/519,418.
Prior Publication US 2023/0132477 A1, May 4, 2023
Int. Cl. F24F 11/49 (2018.01); F24F 11/70 (2018.01)
CPC F24F 11/49 (2018.01) [F24F 11/70 (2018.01)] 17 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of selecting building equipment for serving one or more spaces of a building, the method comprising:
determining one or more hard constraints and one or more soft constraints for the building equipment, the one or more hard constraints comprising constraints that must be satisfied for a combination of building equipment to be selected, wherein the one or more hard constraints correspond to one or more physical limitations of one or more pieces of the building equipment or one or more required outputs from the combination of building equipment, and the one or more soft constraints comprising constraints that may be satisfied but are not required to be satisfied for a combination of building equipment to be selected, wherein the one or more soft constraints correspond to a predetermined operating condition of one or more pieces of the building equipment, and wherein the soft constraints comprise a first set of soft constraints and a second set of soft constraints;
determining a plurality of possible combinations of building equipment to serve the one or more spaces of the building;
determining a first set of zero or more of the possible combinations that meet all of the hard constraints and all of the soft constraints;
determining a second set of zero or more of the possible combinations that meet all of the hard constraints, meet all of the first set of soft constraints, and do not meet all of the second set of soft constraints;
determining a third set of zero or more of the possible combinations that meet all of the hard constraints, do not meet all of the first set of soft constraints, and do not meet all of the second set of soft constraints;
responsive to determining the third set of possible combinations includes one or more possible combinations and each of the first set of possible combinations and the second set of possible combinations includes zero possible combinations, selecting a combination of building equipment to serve the one or more spaces from the third set of possible combinations; and
serving the one or more spaces of the building using the selected combination of building equipment.