A residential rainwater harvesting system as a control engineering challenge problem

The operation of a rainwater harvesting is described for the purpose of a control engineering challenge for student training and competitions. The core of the control problem is very simple and intuitive. Additional constraints and parameters can be incorporated to increase the complexity. Key to the complexity is the generation of disturbances for rainfall, household usage and water availability. Some of the disturbances can be measured but not predicted while others, such as rainfall, can be described with noisy prediction models. A simple control strategy is presented together with evaluation function to compare and assess proposed control solutions. The implementation of the dynamic model, objective function as well as sample data trends are available and hosted by the South African Council for Automation and Control: http://sacac.org.za/.