Senior Project - SoftCORE

The University of Colorado Solar Decathlon team created an innovative Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system for their solar-powered house, which premiered in Washington, DC in the 2007 Solar Decathlon. This system required that temperature set points for two fluid tanks continuously be found to allow the system to work efficiently. Due to the innovative nature of the system, no way of calculating these set points correctly was known. The Solar Decathlon team requested the creation of a system that would automatically determine these set points continuously based on input from users, weather forecasts and optimization of the efficiency of the house. It was also desired that all information about the house be available to the public in a simple web-based interface.

As a result, IntelliCORE was developed. IntelliCORE is an artificially intelligent system that provides set points for the various house components, controls the various HVAC features, and provides a website that the public can visit and use to view the state of the house as well as various educational materials about the house. The website also allows the occupants of the house to manually change the set points to suit their needs. The system was developed in Java using MySQL and Automated Logic's WebCTRL 3.0 building automation system.