The detection and correction of various faulty sensors in a photovoltaic thermal heat pump system

Abstract

Accurate and reliable measurements collected from various physical sensors are of great importance to improve the energy utilization efficiency of solar energy systems. Sensor errors have various significant negative impacts on the automatic control and optimized operation. The current study used the virtual in-situ calibration (VIC) instead of traditional methods to spot possible systematic and random errors of temperature, pressure and mass flowrate sensors in a photovoltaic-thermal heat pump (PVT-HP) system. Seven working conditions were designed to check the robustness and accuracy of the proposed VIC technology. The effects of systematic and random errors on the sensor calibration process and performance estimation of a PVT-HP system were investigated. It’s shown that after calibration the systematic errors of all kinds of sensors were less than 2% and the random errors were also reduced by as much as 74%, significantly reducing the possibility of abnormal data and enhancing the reliability of sensor measurements. The VIC method is very effective to guarantee the thermal performance of PVT-HP system.