On predictive controller design for comfort control in single residential housing

Generalized Predictive Control (GPC) has shown to be an effective strategy for high performance applications, with good temporal and frequency results (small overshoot, cancellation of disturbances, good stability and robustness margins). This paper presents an application of GPC to the climate control in buildings, with particular attention to comfort aspects. The description of the process, the elaboration of a simplified control model and the polynomial synthesis of the predictive controller are successively examined. Furthermore, to reach the objectives of comfort, the anticipative aspect of GPC is modified and an empirical anticipative law is proposed. The interest of this structure for thermal control in buildings is finally shown through the results of the predictive controller in the CLIM2000 environment, coupled with an automatic design of the tuning parameters for a simplified implementation.