Optimal operation of electrical heating system with hybrid model predictive control

Abstract

Abstract We present a hybrid model predictive control (MPC) approach for optimal operation of an electrical heating system. The system comprises two electrical heat generators, thermal and electrical energy storage systems and on-site photo-voltaic power generation. One of the heat generators can only be operated at discrete stages. The electrical and thermal part of the system are modeled as hybrid system with both continuous and binary inputs. We propose a hybrid MPC with time-varying cost function and constraints which explicitly considers binary inputs. The control performance is compared to a conventional, rule-based operation strategy. We were able to reduce the cost of operation and to increase the self-consumption with the proposed control approach.