A Sparse Quadratic Programming Approach to Supervisory Control of Multi-Zone HVAC Systems with Consideration of Peak Demand Shaving and Thermal Comfort

The HVAC system is one of the major power consuming equipment in buildings. Considering the effective setpoint temperature of each zone can increase efficiency in managing power usage in buildings, leading to the operating cost reduction. This paper presents the design of supervisory control (SC) for multi-zone HVAC systems that aims to minimize the total operating cost (TOC) and the thermal comfort cost (TCC). To minimize the TOC and TCC, both objectives are normalized and combined as a quadratic programming (QP) problem which can be efficiently solved. To achieve the design objective, two methods of SC are developed for multi-zone, namely, centralized SC and decentralized SC. We apply standard QP and sparse QP solvers using interior point method. The numerical results reveal that centralized SC performs better according to a tradeoff curve which TOC and TCC are lower. While both solvers give the same results, sparse solver can provide the solutions faster than interior point method. This paper demonstrates that centralized control is appropriate for implementation in multi-zones buildings and the sparse solver proves to be more suitable in the context of sparse QP problem.