Desynchronization of thermally-coupled first-order systems using economic model predictive control

We consider the thermal control of a building, in which multiple rooms are thermally coupled. It is known that in such a case, the temperature control systems for each room may become synchronized, which may deteriorate the performance in terms of power efficiency or fairness. In this paper, economic model predictive control (EMPC) is applied to solve this problem by making each room track a particular temperature trajectory. These trajectories may represent a desired solution of the coupled systems, or may even be infeasible set-points in case the desired solution is infeasible. By solving this economic tracking problem, desynchronization of the units is achieved. Simulations show that by tracking predetermined out-of-phase symmetric trajectories, performance in terms of both power efficiency and fairness can be improved.