Energy Conservation in an Office Building Using an Enhanced Blind System Control

Edorta Carrascal-Lekunberri, Izaskun Garrido, Bram Van der Heijde, Aitor J. Garrido, José María Sala and Lieve Helsen
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Edorta Carrascal-Lekunberri: Automatic Control Group, Department of Thermal Engineering, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), 48013 Bilbao, Spain
Izaskun Garrido: Automatic Control Group, Department of Automatic Control and System Engineering, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), 48013 Bilbao, Spain
Bram Van der Heijde: EnergyVille, 3600 Genk, Belgium
Aitor J. Garrido: Automatic Control Group, Department of Automatic Control and System Engineering, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), 48013 Bilbao, Spain
José María Sala: Department of Thermal Engineering, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), 48013 Bilbao, Spain
Lieve Helsen: EnergyVille, 3600 Genk, Belgium

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 2, 1-23

Abstract: The two spaces office module is usually considered as a representative case-study to analyse the energetic improvement in office buildings. In this kind of buildings, the use of a model predictive control (MPC) scheme for the climate system control provides energy savings over 15% in comparison to classic control policies. This paper focuses on the influence of solar radiation on the climate control of the office module under Belgian weather conditions. Considering MPC as main climate control, it proposes a novel distributed enhanced control for the blind system (BS) that takes into account part of the predictive information of the MPC. In addition to the savings that are usually achieved by MPC, it adds a potential 15% improvement in global energy use with respect to the usually proposed BS hysteresis control. Moreover, from the simulation results it can be concluded that the thermal comfort is also improved. The proposed BS scheme increases the energy use ratio between the thermally activated building system (TABS) and air-handling unit (AHU); therefore increasing the use of TABS and allowing economic savings, due to the use of more cost-effective thermal equipment.

Keywords: model predictive control (MPC); enhanced blind system control (BSC); thermally activated building system (TABS); two office model; energy savings; solar irradiation; thermal comfort (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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