Distributed building temperature control with power constraints

Abstract

Generally, heating, cooling and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are designed to handle worst case loads, and this over-design of HVAC equipment is one of the main reasons for building energy inefficiency. When the HVAC system is not over-designed, there exists a trade-off between the comfort of the building's occupants and the available heating/cooling power at critical load hours. We propose a distributed approach that maximizes the comfort of the building's occupants under several power constraints. We prove by means of graph theoretical tools and passivity analysis, that the proposed controller asymptotically reaches an optimal equilibrium without the need of full information. Finally, some simulations and comparisons are presented to illustrate the performance of our method.