PhD position Quantifying the sensitivity of thermal comfort control to system uncertainty

Functie

Beschrijving

Advanced control strategies, and model predictive control (MPC) in particular, are gaining widespread interest for building energy management systems, since they can systematically save energy and/or costs with simultaneous thermal comfort improvement, as well as adapt the energy demand according to the available renewable/residual supply. The performance of any MPC strategy is dependent on the accuracy of the model describing the system and on the quality of the forecasts of disturbances, such as weather and occupant behaviour. Deviating model parameters and inaccurate disturbance predictions are shown to give rise to increased energy costs and comfort violations if not properly accounted for, and require real-time corrective actions, thereby voiding a possibly consented demand response (DR) strategy. The question on how accurate the controller model should be in order to obtain a performant optimal con...