Towards an improved gain scheduling predictive control strategy for a solar thermal power plant

Abstract

This paper improves a recently proposed gain scheduling predictive control strategy on the ACUREX distributed solar collector field at the Plataforma Solar de Almería. Measured disturbances are an integral part of the plant and while simple classical, series and parallel, feedforward approaches have been proposed and used extensively in the literature, the proposed approach incorporates a feedforward systematically into the predictive control strategy by including the effects of the measured disturbances of the ACUREX plant into the predictions of future outputs. Models of the measured disturbances are estimated around a family of operating points from input-output data and using a subspace identification method while taking into account the frequency response of the plant. Input-output data are obtained from a validated nonlinear simulation model of the plant rather than the plant itself. The nonlinear simulation model is validated against measured data obtained from the ACUREX plant and the effectiveness of the proposed control approach is evaluated in the same nonlinear simulation environment. The paper also considers the impact of incorporating the future behaviour of a measured disturbance along a given prediction horizon, a theme which has received little attention in the literature.

Hybrid Nonlinear MPC of a Solar Cooling Plant

“…In [37] a nonlinear continuous time generalized predictive control (GPC) is presented and simulation results are shown. In [38], an improvement of a gain scheduling model predictive controller is proposed and tested on a model of the ACUREX solar field.…”

Gain Scheduled Subspace Predictive Control of a Pressurized Water-type Nuclear Reactor

“…Gain scheduling is a widely exercised control design approach for complex non-linear processes either with time-varying or operating level-dependent behaviours [8]. Gain scheduling is particularly favoured by industries over other non-linear control methods due to its generality, simplicity, and ability to manage control design trade-off [9]. Gain scheduled controllers have been used for steam generator water level control [10]- [12].…”

Proportional–integral‐like fuzzy controller of a small‐scale linear fresnel reflector solar plant

“…Simulation results showed the superior performance of the proposed controller as compared to a single local dual‐mode MPC. An improvement to [14] was presented in [15] by including the dynamics of the measured disturbances (solar radiation and the field inlet temperature) to the local process models. Simulation results showed that including the accurate prediction model of the disturbances resulted in a reduction of root mean square error of set‐point tracking of ∼12.55%.…”