Investigation of the Influence of Controller Approaches on Room Thermal Behaviour A Simulation Study

Abstract

To control the indoor temperature of rooms two kinds of approaches are common. The first one is to use standard PI-controllers with a set of default parameters, which often leads to insufficient performance, waste of energy and unacceptable comfort violations [Rahmati, 2003]. The other approach is to use specifically developed and adapted controllers [Seidel et al., 2015], which have the drawback in a time-consuming and expensive development. Therefore, this paper investigates on finding rules and guidelines to find a suitable controller for a given room without the need of expensive controller adaption via simulation. To provide those rules a simulation study will be performed. This paper presents the first preparatory steps of this investigation, which includes the choice and development of four different room models equipped with different heating systems, which are an electrical radiator, a floor heating system, and a water supplied radiator. The authors present five types of controller models of different controller types to control the operative temperature of a room. Simulations of well-defined scenarios analyze the eligibility of the controller models regarding net energy consumption and comfort for the considered room models. First optimization results to improve the quality of the controllers are shown and further steps are explained.