Repetitive Control to Improve Users’ Thermal Comfort and Energy Efficiency in Buildings

Abstract

The development of control systems to reach and maintain optimal thermal comfort inside buildings is a research topic which has received great attention in the last several years because people’s productivity is linked to their comfort. The main weakness of these control systems is that they do not take into account that people affect their own thermal comfort, since humans are heat sources that increase the temperature inside buildings. For this reason, people can be considered as disturbances to thermal comfort control systems. Usually, people follow a timetable along the week, so they enter and leave buildings at the same time every day. Taking this behavior into account can be very useful in improving people’s thermal comfort. In this paper, a repetitive control (RC) approach that makes use of this information to anticipate the effects of people on indoor temperature is presented. Besides that, the control system includes a proportional–integral (PI) controller in charge of counteracting the non-periodic disturbances. Simulation results obtained with this control system through a room simulator are presented in order to show its efficiency.