Optimal Control Strategies for Energy Production Systems using Buildings Thermal Mass

Charbel Salameh , Patrick Schalbart , Bruno Peuportier (1)

1 CES - Centre Efficacité Énergétique des Systèmes

The aim of this study is to develop real-time energy management strategies for HVAC systems taking into account the heat storage in building thermal mass. In fact, thermal energy production represents up to 50 % of building's total energy consumption and 75 % of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions. Different systems and storage methods can be integrated to reduce the cost and the GHG emissions related to heating, cooling and Domestic Hot Water (DHW) production in buildings. In this context, multiple studies have developed optimal control systems (such as Model Predictive Control) for optimising thermal production and/or storage systems. The results presented in these studies showed a wide range of reduction rates due to different hypotheses, models, methods and systems taken into consideration. In real time optimisation, the building model is usually separated from the thermal system. In this study, a reduced model and a continuous optimisation method were used to minimise the cost of the building's heating. The applied strategy combined the building model and thermal mass with a Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) and a Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES). This first approach showed promising results by reducing the cost between 10 % and 15 %. This method will be used to combine different systems and improve their performance in real-time. Key Innovations  Real time simultaneous multi-system optimisation using Pontryagin Minimum Principal.  BTES and GSHP operation optimisation taking into consideration building thermal mass energy storage under variable electricity pricing. Practical Implications Real time optimal control is an interesting solution for cost and GHG emissions reduction. When it comes to such simulations, the results can vary on the models, hypotheses and algorithms used. Every project should be analysed separately, and the building properties taken into consideration in the application of the optimal control.

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Charbel Salameh, Patrick Schalbart, Bruno Peuportier. Optimal Control Strategies for Energy Production Systems using Buildings Thermal Mass. Building Simulation 2021 Conference, Sep 2021, Bruges, Belgium. ⟨hal-03379993⟩