Predictive and interactive controllers for solar absorption cooling systems in buildings

A predictive control approach is proposed for a solar powered hot water storage (SHWS) system which interacts with a simple thermal building control. The primary objective of this first controller is to optimize the use of the solar energy in order to ensure the cooling requirement of the building. The main difficulties are related to the presence of safety constraints and the nonlinearity as well as the hybrid nature of the system. The resulting optimization problem is simplified using various relaxations. The second controller is dedicated to the control of the building temperature. Using a model of the building thermal behavior, it sends its predicted operating profile to the SHWS controller. The performances of these two interacting controllers are illustrated by various simulations on a TRNSYS model of the building and its subsystems. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.