Comparative Analysis of ON/OFF, PID and Model Predictive Control System in HVAC Systems

This paper discusses on the implementation and impacts of various controllers used in a Rooftop Packaged HVAC System for its constant and variable volume configurations. The main objective of the paper is to bring a comparison between the traditional controllers like ON/OFF and PID with Model Predictive Control System, and to establish its effectiveness over the others for both zone temperature and energy consumption reduction controls. A mathematical model of building using basic thermodynamic equations is built in MATLAB/Simulink, and the controllers are designed for different configurations of the Rooftop unit to study its behavior. From the simulation results, it is found that PID surpasses ON/OFF controller in terms of energy consumption, whereas Model Predictive Control System (MPC) outperforms the other two in both controller performance and energy consumption reduction.