A refined classification method of heat customers to improve inter-household thermal balance intelligent control and regulation

Chunhua Sun, Hao Yan, Lingyu Yuan, Shanshan Cao, Weichi Ma, Chenyu Suo, Chengying Qi and Xiangdong Wu

Energy, 2024, vol. 304, issue C

Abstract: Hydraulic imbalance in district heating systems (DHSs) especially in the secondary pipe network hinders the improvement of system energy efficiency. To improve inter-household thermal balance on the secondary side, this paper proposes a refined classification and intelligent regulation method for heat customers. Firstly, an intelligent balancing system is proposed with the smart valves installed at heat customer's thermal entrance. Then, the refined method classifies the heat customers based on room comprehensive thermal characteristic coefficient. The regulation periods and target return temperature predictive models are determined for each customer type to achieve balance regulation. Finally, the proposed intelligent balance system was applied to a practical DHS secondary pipe network to verify its balance effect. After the regulation, indoor temperature non-uniformity coefficient for each type of heat customer decreased by 15 %; while the return water temperature dispersion reduced by 8 %–18 %. This led to a significant improvement in hydraulic and thermal balance among heat customers, resulting in a 6.2 % heat-saving rate. The application provides a reference for inter-household thermal balance regulation in scenarios where indoor temperature loggers are limited within similar secondary pipe network of DHSs.

Keywords: Secondary pipe network; Inter-household thermal balance; Heat customer classification; Room comprehensive thermal characteristic; Target return temperature; Regulation period (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544224019947
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:304:y:2024:i:c:s0360544224019947

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2024.132220

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().