A hybrid predictive control strategy for solar cooling systems in residential buildings

This paper proposes a hybrid predictive control strategy composed of local predictive controllers which interact with each other. This control strategy is applied to a solar powered hot water storage (SHWS) system that supplies energy for a building cooling system. Two local controllers are proposed for the SHWS system and the building cooling system respectively. The main objective of the control approach is to optimize the use of the solar energy in order to ensure the cooling requirement of the building. The proposed interactions between the controllers offer a degree of freedom to the SHWS controller in order to satisfy the energy demand by the building cooling system. The performances of this interacting control architecture are illustrated using a TRNSYS model of a solar cooling system.