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Title: Aggregation and data driven identification of building thermal dynamic model and unmeasured disturbance

Journal Article · · Energy and Buildings
 [1];  [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)
  2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
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An aggregate model is a single-zone equivalent of a multi-zone building, and is useful for many purposes, including model based control of large heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment. This paper deals with the problem of simultaneously identifying an aggregate thermal dynamic model and unknown disturbances from input–output data of multi-zone buildings. The unknown disturbance is a key challenge since it is not measurable but non-negligible. In this paper, we first present a principled method to aggregate a multi-zone building model into a single zone model, and show the aggregation is not as trivial as it has been assumed in the prior art. We then provide a method to identify the parameters of the model and the unknown disturbance for this aggregate (single-zone) model. Finally, we test our proposed identification algorithm to data collected from a multi-zone building testbed in Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A key insight provided by the aggregation method allows us to recognize under what conditions the estimation of the disturbance signal will be necessarily poor and uncertain, even in the case of a specially designed test in which the disturbances affecting each zone are known (as the case of our experimental testbed). This insight is used to provide a heuristic that can be used to assess when the identification results are likely to have high or low accuracy.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725; 1463316; 1646229; 1934322
OSTI ID:
1706243
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1761624; OSTI ID: 2325342
Journal Information:
Energy and Buildings, Vol. NA, Issue NA; ISSN 0378-7788
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (1)

MPC-Based Hierarchical Control of a Multi-Zone Commercial HVAC System preprint January 2021

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Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
building thermal dynamics modeling
system identification
disturbance estimation
data-driven modeling