Domestic heat generation and distribution with time-variant receding horizon control

摘要

Modern domestic heating systems combine conventional heat sources with more advanced devices such as heat pumps or energy storages. Due to the existence of multiple sources and sinks, the question arises, how to operate these systems in an economically optimal fashion. It is natural to pose this question as an optimal control problem that is solved on a receding horizon, where the receding horizon allows to account for periodically updated predictions of the heat demand and energy prices. These periodic updates imply, however, the optimal control problem has time-variant constraints and a time-variant cost function. We demonstrate the resulting receding horizon optimal control scheme can be solved and optimizes the heat flows in a domestic heating system that comprises a heat pump, a thermal storage and an auxiliary heater. Our results show the predictive controller is able to anticipate and compensate for heat shortages due to heat pump blocking times.