Comfort control in buildings with adherence to the required thermal energy input in zones

This paper focusses on implementation of the energy management in building zones with fan coil units. The implementation is based on direct control of the required thermal energy inputs. We develop it as a necessary add-on to model predictive control algorithms that use thermal models of a building and compute the optimal energy inputs in different building zones for minimization of the overall energy cost required to keep the thermal comfort. The presented approach is substantially different to the generally accepted temperature control via local reactive control that only uses local measurements in deciding the control actions for zones thermal actuators. We demonstrate that closed loop performance, spent energy and the users comfort, is significantly improved over conventional control approaches. The model of a fan coil unit is identified and validated based on real data gathered from the living lab of University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. This model is then used for the subsequent control development and validation of the overall control approach via simulations.