Economic heat control of mixing loop for residential buildings supplied by low-temperature district heating

Abstract

Increasing the penetration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), the heat pumps are an alternative solution to facilitate the integration of RES into district heating. To hedge against the intermittency of RES, the flexibility potentials of the thermal inertia of buildings are unlocked and integrated into power systems. This paper suggests a novel structure to control the mixing loop of residential heating systems supplied by electrically operated district heating. The Economic Model Predictive Control (EMPC) is proposed to optimize the heat demand of the buildings in response to electricity market price. The EMPC controls the temperature and flow rate of forward/return water in the mixing loop to minimize the energy consumption cost of households. The thermal dynamics of the buildings are modeled by 3-state differential equations to integrate the flexibility potentials of thermal inertia into the district heating. The approach optimizes the heat consumption of the building with multi-temperature zones. The Continuous-Time Stochastic Model (CTSM) is addressed to determine the thermal dynamics of the building using sensor data. Finally, a 150 m2 Danish test house with four temperature zones is simulated. The simulation results show that the suggested approach not only minimizes the energy consumption cost but also provides flexibility for the Danish Electricity Market.