Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) consumes a significant fraction of energy in commercial buildings. Hence, the use of optimization techniques to reduce HVAC energy consumption has been widely studied. Model predictive control (MPC) is one state of the art optimization technique for HVAC control which converts the control problem to a sequence of optimization problems, each over a finite time horizon. In a typical MPC, future system state is estimated from a model using predictions of model inputs, such as building occupancy and outside air temperature. Consequently, as prediction accuracy deteriorates, MPC performance–in terms of occupant comfort and building energy use–degrades. In this work, we use a custom-built building thermal simulator to systematically investigate the impact of occupancy prediction errors on occupant comfort and energy consumption. Our analysis shows that in our test building, as occupancy prediction error increases from 5 to 20% the performance of an MPC-based HVAC controller becomes worse than that of even a simple static schedule. However, when combined with a personal environmental control (PEC) system, HVAC controllers are considerably more robust to prediction errors. Thus, we quantify the effectiveness of PECs in mitigating the impact of forecast errors on MPC control for HVAC systems.

中文翻译：

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使用个人环境舒适系统减轻占用预测误差对HVAC性能的影响

供暖，通风和空调（HVAC）在商业建筑中消耗了大量的能源。因此，已经广泛研究了使用优化技术来减少HVAC能耗。模型预测控制（MPC）是HVAC控制技术的一种最先进的优化技术，它将控制问题转换为一系列优化问题，每个问题都在有限的时间范围内进行。在典型的MPC中，使用模型输入的预测（例如建筑物占用率和外部气温）从模型中估计未来的系统状态。因此，随着预测准确性的下降，就乘员舒适度和建筑能耗而言，MPC性能将下降。在这项工作中 我们使用定制的建筑物热仿真器来系统地研究占用预测误差对乘客舒适度和能耗的影响。我们的分析表明，在我们的测试大楼中，随着占用率预测误差从5％增大到20％，基于MPC的HVAC控制器的性能甚至比简单的静态计划还要差。但是，与个人环境控制（PEC）系统结合使用时，HVAC控制器对预测错误的鲁棒性更高。因此，我们量化了PEC在减轻预测误差对HVAC系统MPC控制的影响方面的有效性。当占用预测误差从5％增加到20％时，基于MPC的HVAC控制器的性能将变得比简单的静态计划还要差。但是，与个人环境控制（PEC）系统结合使用时，HVAC控制器对预测错误的鲁棒性更高。因此，我们量化了PEC在减轻预测误差对HVAC系统MPC控制的影响方面的有效性。当占用预测误差从5％增加到20％时，基于MPC的HVAC控制器的性能将变得比简单的静态计划还要差。但是，与个人环境控制（PEC）系统结合使用时，HVAC控制器对预测错误的鲁棒性更高。因此，我们量化了PEC在减轻预测误差对HVAC系统MPC控制的影响方面的有效性。