Distributed Adaptive Control of Air Handling Units for Interconnected Building Zones

Approximately half of a building's energy needs is attributed to Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems in order to provide indoor thermal comfort for occupants. The complexity of such systems along with their high energy consumption makes the design of advanced control algorithms an imperative need. In this paper, we propose a distributed adaptive algorithm for temperature regulation in multi-zone buildings. By exploiting the building architecture as well as the structure of Air Handling Unit (AHU) systems, the proposed scheme assigns a local valve flow controller to each thermal coil that brings heat load to a zone to regulate its temperature considering the zone's needs. The scheme takes into account the network structure of thermal zones in a building and the heat exchange that occurs between them. In addition, its performance does not depend on accurate knowledge of system parameters, precise calibration or historical data, and thus it can overcome changes that happen due to human activity or wear and tear, as well as disturbances due to unknown heat loads, solar gains, weather conditions, or electrical equipment. The proposed algorithm is shown to be scalable and provide stability for the overall system. Its performance is evaluated by a realistic simulation example, where it is applied to a primary school building model.