Development of energy-efficient personalized thermal comfort driven control in HVAC systems

Abstract

Increasing thermal comfort and reducing energy consumption are two main objectives of advanced HVAC control systems. Studies conducted in the last decade show that intelligent HVAC systems can geatly affect thermal comfort, health, satisfaction, and productivity of building occupants while decreasing the energey consumption. Also, personelized thermal comfort driven control of the HVAC systems is the most effective way of saving energy and maintaining thermal comfort. In this thesis, an energy-efficient personalized thermal comfort control algorithm is developed to improve HVAC control systems. The thesis presents a complete system to control algorithm which includes the deployment of wireless sensor network. First a novel control algorithm is developed to perceived comfort conditions of occupants and to save energy. Then, a prototype of the personalized thermal comfort driven controller (PTC-DC) is manufactured an tested in a case building at İzmir Institute of Technology Campus, İzmir/Turkey. The proposed control strategy is tested betwen July 3rd, 2017 and November 1st, 2018, and compared with conventional controller in terms of energey saving and boath energetic and exergetic approaches of thermal comfort. The results showed that PTC-DC satisfies neutral thermal comfort for 92% of total measurements days while AM=0 for only 6% of total measurement days for conventional controller. From energy consumption point of wiev, PTC-DC decreased energy consumption by 13.2% compared to conventional controller.