Adaptive control strategies for single room heating

Today advanced control techniques are used to reduce the energy demand of buildings. But often they provide higher temperatures than necessary, thus realizing less energy savings than possible. The scope of the adaptive control strategies for single room heating is the reduction of energy demand by adapting to the user's temperature demand profile. To create the demand profile, the user can provide feedback about his thermal comfort with a simple push button to the system. The system calculates a usage profile for every single room and controls the room temperature according to this usage profile. This adaptation requires no more feedback than a thermostatic valve, a necessary condition to keep the system useful for all levels of society.This paper describes the simulative tests of this system. First simulative results show that an adaptation to the user's profile yields energy savings around 11% compared to a reference case. These energy savings do not come at the expense of the user's thermal comfort. Furthermore it can be shown that the algorithm works very user-friendly because it does not need any set-up or complex interaction besides pushing a button if in thermal discomfort.

► Creating a room temperature profile without programming by the user.
► Energy savings through advanced single room control.
► Analysis of energy savings and user comfort by use of simulations.