Event‐triggered distributed model predictive control scheme for temperature regulation in multi‐zone air conditioning systems with improved indoor thermal preference indicator

Abstract

SummaryDriven by the increasing needs in multi‐zone buildings for reducing the air conditioning (A/C) system related energy consumption and increasing the occupants' thermal comfort, an event‐triggered distributed model predictive control (DMPC) scheme for building temperature regulation with improved indoor thermal preference indicator is proposed. To this end, a temperature‐energy model of the A/C system in a zone which considers multiple types of heat transfer, and the system model of the multi‐zone A/C system are derived first. On this basis, an improved indoor thermal preference indicator that trades off the A/C systems related energy consumption with the aggregate thermal comfort of the occupants is proposed for the multi‐zone A/C system, then the optimal indoor temperature set‐points for each zone are determined by using the distributed consensus algorithm. It is followed by an event‐triggered DMPC scheme by adjusting the A/C systems to arrive at the optimal indoor temperature set‐points for all the zones with lower communication and computation load. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed methods are demonstrated through a case study on an actual multi‐zone A/C system.