As the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems accounts for a major sector of energy consumption for commercial buildings, there has been a greater demand for improving the efficiency of such systems. The air-side economizers have been developed as a class of energy-saving HVAC devices that may increase the energy efficiency by taking advantage of outdoor air during cool or cold weather. However, many economizers do not operate in the expected manner and waste even more energy than before installation, mostly due to the unreliable sensors and actuators in practice. Better control strategy is needed for optimal and robust operation. In this paper, an extremum-seeking control (ESC) based self-optimizing strategy is proposed to minimize the energy consumption, with the feedback of chilled water supply command rather than the temperature and humidity measurements. The mechanical cooling load is minimized by seeking the optimal outdoor air damper opening in real time. Such scheme does not need temperature and humidity sensors, and depends much less on the knowledge of the economizer model. Simulation was performed on a MODELICA based transient model of a single-duct air-handling unit developed with DYMOLA and AIRCONDITIONING LIBRARY. The simulation results demonstrated the potential of using ESC to achieve the minimal mechanical cooling load in a self-optimizing manner. In addition, an antiwindup ESC scheme is proposed to handle the ESC windup issue due to actuator (damper) saturation. The simulation results validated the effectiveness of the proposed antiwindup ESC.
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e-mail: pli@uwm.edu
e-mail: yyli@uwm.edu
e-mail: john.seem@gmail.com
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Efficient Operation of Air-Side Economizer Using Extremum Seeking Control
Pengfei Li,
Pengfei Li
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
e-mail: pli@uwm.edu
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
, Milwaukee, WI 53211
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Yaoyu Li,
Yaoyu Li
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
e-mail: yyli@uwm.edu
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
, Milwaukee, WI 53211
Search for other works by this author on:
John E. Seem
John E. Seem
Building Efficiency Research Group,
e-mail: john.seem@gmail.com
Johnson Controls, Inc.
, Milwaukee, WI 53209
Search for other works by this author on:
Pengfei Li
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
, Milwaukee, WI 53211e-mail: pli@uwm.edu
Yaoyu Li
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
, Milwaukee, WI 53211e-mail: yyli@uwm.edu
John E. Seem
Building Efficiency Research Group,
Johnson Controls, Inc.
, Milwaukee, WI 53209e-mail: john.seem@gmail.com
J. Dyn. Sys., Meas., Control. May 2010, 132(3): 031009 (10 pages)
Published Online: April 27, 2010
Article history
Received:
March 28, 2009
Revised:
October 19, 2009
Online:
April 27, 2010
Published:
April 27, 2010
Citation
Li, P., Li, Y., and Seem, J. E. (April 27, 2010). "Efficient Operation of Air-Side Economizer Using Extremum Seeking Control." ASME. J. Dyn. Sys., Meas., Control. May 2010; 132(3): 031009. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4001216
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