Abstract: In a building which has at least two floors, an apparatus for controlling and regulating room temperature having a hierarchical structure includes a predictive device on the top level, that provides optimal control of the use of at least one free energy source, and at least one device on a lower level which is used for feedback regulation of at least one additional energy source. The predictive device uses a building model and repeatedly optimizes the energy requirement or the energy costs. The regulation strategy of the predictive device uses characteristics of a passive heat accumulator of the building.

Abstract: In a method for controlling and regulating at least one room comfort variable (TR1; TR2) in a building, requirement signals (30) for cost-intensive energy are stored during a time interval (73) comprising a specified time period, the requirement signals (30) stored in the elapsed time interval are evaluated and used to generate current control signals (10, 11 . . . 15) for actuators for the use of what is known as free or low-cost energy. The method minimizes the consumption of cost-intensive or what is known as not free energy whilst still satisfying a predefined comfort requirement when heating, cooling, ventilating, lighting and shading rooms or zones of rooms in the building.

Abstract: A predictive apparatus for controlling or regulating supply values (T_VRL) includes a first data store in which rules, based on a linear consumer model, for calculating process values are stored, a second data store in which rules for restrictions or limit values to be observed for process values and for values derived from process values are stored, and further also means for repeatable optimizing of the energy consumption or of the energy costs with the aid of linear or quadratic programming. The apparatus is configured such that the optimizing can be carried out over a sliding time horizon.