Self-Learning Optimal Control for Ice-Storage Air Conditioning Systems via Data-Based Adaptive Dynamic Programming

In this article, the optimal control scheme for ice-storage air conditioning (IAC) system is solved via a data-based adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) method. It is the first time that ADP is employed to design a self-learning scheme, which obtains the optimal control policy of IAC system. First, based on the data of the temperature, irradiance, and cooling load in an actual project, a prediction model of cooling load is built by a three-layer neural network with the performance verification. Second, the operation of the IAC system is analyzed. Third, a data-based ADP method is designed to realize a self-learning optimal control for the IAC system. Then, numerical results show that using the data-based optimal control method can reduce the operation costs. Finally, the comparison results show that the developed ADP method improves the system efficiency, minimizing the overall cost. Thus, the superiority of the developed algorithm is verified.