Development of Optimization Tool for Air Conditioning System Operation

Abstract

This study aims to realize the optimization of the air-conditioning system operation. Although set values of air-conditioning systems are usually fixed, variable setting values are used in this study. It is possible that less energy consumption with greater comfort is achieved by selecting appropriate set values in consideration of situations which change from day to day. In this study, the optimization of air-conditioning system operation is carried out by selecting appropriate set values in terms of energy consumptions and the comfort. The prediction of building heat loads is necessary to realize the optimization in ever-changing environments. Therefore, a more robust optimization method which handles errors in the prediction was proposed, and the optimization tool for an air-conditioning system was developed. The developed optimization tool is incorporated into the Building and Energy Management System (BEMS), and it automatically changes setting values acquiring data including driving data from the BEMS. Experiments were conducted to clarify the effectiveness of the tool, and simulations in the case of a medium-scale office building were also done for the evaluation of the tool. Experiments prove that the evaluation value tends to improve by using the optimization tool. As the result of simulations, it is found out that the evaluation value improves by considering prediction errors and that the evaluation value is reduced by 12.1% at maximum.