Evaluation of optimal control for active and passive building thermal storage

992

501

a b s t r a c tThis paper presents an investigation of how Model Predictive Control (MPC) and weather predictions can increase the energy efficiency in Integrated Room Automation (IRA) while respecting occupant comfort. IRA deals with the simultaneous control of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) as well as blind positioning and electric lighting of a building zone such that the room temperature as well as CO 2 and luminance levels stay within given comfort ranges. MPC is an advanced control technique which, when applied to buildings, employs a model of the building dynamics and solves an optimization problem to determine the optimal control inputs. In this paper it is reported on the development and analysis of a Stochastic Model Predictive Control (SMPC) strategy for building climate control that takes into account the uncertainty due to the use of weather predictions.As first step the potential of MPC was assessed by means of a large-scale factorial simulation study that considered different types of buildings and HVAC systems at four representative European sites. Then for selected representative cases the control performance of SMPC, the impact of the accuracy of weather predictions, as well as the tunability of SMPC were investigated. The findings suggest that SMPC outperforms current control practice.

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of model predictive control and weather forecasts for energy efficient building climate control

Oldewurtel

Parisio

Jones

et al. 2012

992

501

“…Along with increased interest in the demand side energy management [4][5][6], to save costs in energy generation and plant construction and increase gird resilience, many studies have been conducted to reduce or shift peak load in buildings (e.g., [7][8][9][10][11]). Lee and Braun [7] proposed a model-based approach to minimize peak cooling load using building thermal mass and demonstrated that their proposed method can result in about 30% reduction in peak cooling loads for a particular building.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lee and Braun [7] proposed a model-based approach to minimize peak cooling load using building thermal mass and demonstrated that their proposed method can result in about 30% reduction in peak cooling loads for a particular building. Applications of building thermal energy storage have been investigated to shift peak building thermal loads [8][9][10][11].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Passive energy management through increased thermal capacitance

Carpenter

Mago

Luck

et al. 2014

Energy usage within the world is increasing at a drastic rate. Buildings currently consume a major amount of the total energy used within the United States, and most of this energy usage supports heating and cooling. This demand shows that new passive energy management systems are needed. The use of Increased Thermal Capacitance (ITC) is proposed as a new passive energy management system. To increase thermal capacitance, a piping system is either added into a building's walls or ceiling. In this paper, a building with ITC added is compared to a similar building without ITC using the simulation program TRNSYS. Along with a comparison between the walls and ceiling, several parameters are analyzed for their effect on the performance of the ITC. ITC was found to be effective especially when located in the ceiling, with the location, specific heat and tank size being the most important factors. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

“…It is shown in simulation that for a small storage tank, the predictive control saves energy cost when compared with non-predictive strategies. A weather predictor based on observed weather data is used by Henze et al [11][12][13]. The system under study uses active and passive building thermal storage systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the performance of a combined solar system with heat pump for houses

Ahmad

Eftekhari

Steffen

et al. 2013

Citation: AHMAD, M.W. ... et al., 2013. Investigating the performance of a combined solar system with heat pump for houses. Energy and Buildings, 63, Additional Information:• AbstractThe UK government has committed to generate 20% of the country's energy from renewable sources by 2020. This paper investigates energy reduction in houses by using an innovative solar thermal collector combined with a heat pump system. The dynamic lumped parameter model for a small house is derived and the combined heating system is used to provide the typical hot water and heating requirement. The goal is to maintain thermal comfort inside the house and reduce the amount of electricity consumption used for heating and hot water. This is achieved by reducing the electricity costs through optimising the operation of the heat pump, integrating the available solar energy, and by shifting electricity consumption to the cheaper night time tariff. Models of conventional controller on-off and a multi-variable model predictive control (MPC) are developed and used for several different climatic conditions. The results showed that the model predictive controller performed best by providing better comfort, consuming less electric energy and better use of cheap night time electricity by load shifting and storing heat energy in the heating tank.