Evolutionary optimization methods for predictive on-off control

AbstractOn-off control is still widely used in the industry, especially for discontinuous actuators, e.g. compressors, steam turbines or furnace burners. Exact set-point control is not possible by an on-off controller. Lower and upper limits are defined for the control signal which should not be violated. For this predictive gap control quadratic and horizon dependent cost functions are defined. Traditional numerical optimization fails with longer prediction horizons, but a genetic algorithm can be effectively applied even for long horizons.