Self-optimizing control of air-source heat pump with multivariable extremum seeking

Abstract

The air-source heat pump (ASHP) is widely adopted for cooling and heating of residential and commercial buildings. The performance of ASHP can be controlled by several operating variables, such as compressor capacity, condenser fan speed, evaporator fan speed and suction superheat. In practice, the system characteristics can be varied significantly by the variations in ambient condition, operation setpoint, internal thermal load and equipment degradation, which makes it difficult to obtain accurate plant models. As consequence, the model based control strategies for ASHP could limit the achievable energy efficiency. Model-free self-optimizing control strategies are thus more preferable. In this study, a multi-input extremum seeking control (ESC) scheme is proposed for both heating and cooling operation of ASHP. The zone temperature is assumed to be regulated by the compressor capacity, while the expansion valve opening is used to regulate the suction superheat at the given setpoint. The total power consumption of the compressor, the condenser fan and the evaporator fan is measured as input to the ESC, while the ESC controls the evaporator fan speed, the condenser fan speed and the suction superheat setpoint. The proposed scheme is evaluated with a Modelica based dynamic simulation model of ASHP under both cooling and heating modes of operation. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme to achieve the maximum achievable efficiency in a nearly model-free manner.