Repetitive Control to Improve Users’ Thermal Comfort and Energy Efficiency in Buildings

José Domingo Álvarez, Ramon Costa-Castelló and María Del Mar Castilla
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José Domingo Álvarez: Dpto. de Informática, Área de Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática, Universidad de Almería, Agrifood Campus of International Excellence (ceiA3) CIESOL Joint Centre University of Almería-CIEMAT, 04120 Almería, Spain
Ramon Costa-Castelló: Departament d’Enginyeria de Sistemes, Automàtica i Informàtica Industrial, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), C/ Pau Gargallo, 5, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
María Del Mar Castilla: Dpto. Ingeniería de Sistemas y Automática, Universidad de Sevilla, Camino de los Descubrimientos s/n, 41092 Seville, Spain

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: The development of control systems to reach and maintain optimal thermal comfort inside buildings is a research topic which has received great attention in the last several years because people’s productivity is linked to their comfort. The main weakness of these control systems is that they do not take into account that people affect their own thermal comfort, since humans are heat sources that increase the temperature inside buildings. For this reason, people can be considered as disturbances to thermal comfort control systems. Usually, people follow a timetable along the week, so they enter and leave buildings at the same time every day. Taking this behavior into account can be very useful in improving people’s thermal comfort. In this paper, a repetitive control (RC) approach that makes use of this information to anticipate the effects of people on indoor temperature is presented. Besides that, the control system includes a proportional–integral (PI) controller in charge of counteracting the non-periodic disturbances. Simulation results obtained with this control system through a room simulator are presented in order to show its efficiency.

Keywords: repetitive control; thermal comfort; Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) index; energy efficiency (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: 2018
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