Fuzzy Logic-Based Direct Load Control Scheme for Air Conditioning Load to Reduce Energy Consumption

A huge body of research is concentrated on developing advance load control strategies for reducing energy consumption and ensuring smooth operation of power system. Air conditioning loads are considered major energy consuming electrical loads in residential and business buildings, and that may cause significant rise in energy consumption. This paper presents an implementation of fuzzy controller with different number and shapes of membership functions for smoothing energy consumption of an air conditioning load while dealing with thermal disturbances. Simulations are conducted in MATLAB Simulink and the results demonstrate that the fuzzy controller with triangular membership function gives the desired performance with an error of less than 1% and saves 25% energy consumption. The obtained results are found effective in terms of smoothing energy consumption pattern of an air conditioning load without compromising consumer' s comfort. Performance of the designed controller is also compared with different controllers including self-tuning adaptive fuzzy controller, linear quadratic regulator (LQR) and nonlinear controllers. The presented fuzzy controller stands-out in terms of desired performance, simplicity and implementation.