Patent ID: 8352085

Claim:
A method of distributing cooling resources to a plurality of locations using a plurality of hierarchically identified cooling microgrids that comprise levels, each level of the hierarchically identified cooling microgrids comprising a plurality of resource actuators configured to vary distribution of the cooling resources, said method comprising: receiving conditions detected at the plurality of locations; and using a processor to determine settings for the plurality of resource actuators in each level of the hierarchically identified cooling microgrids that maintain conditions at the plurality of locations within predetermined ranges; identifying the plurality of resource actuators as being included in one or more microgrids, wherein the processor is configured to determine the settings for the plurality of resource actuators based upon the one or more microgrids into which the plurality of resource actuators are identified as being included; optimizing at least one measure of performance associated with supplying distributed cooling resources to the plurality of locations while maintaining the conditions within the predetermined ranges, based on manipulation of the resource actuators across levels of the hierarchically identified cooling microgrids; the manipulation performed to determine a plurality of measures of performance, and identifying an optimized measure of performance and associated settings for the plurality of resource actuators; wherein the at least one measure of performance comprises a coefficient of performance of the distributed cooling resources and wherein using the processor to determine settings for the plurality of resource actuators further comprises using the processor to determine settings to maximize the coefficient of performance of the distributed cooling resources.