Experimental results of different control strategies in a solar air-conditioning system at part load

In this article, different control strategies used in a solar cooling installation are presented and compared, publishing real working data from three summer periods, with the system working at part load.The facility consists of two solar fields that feed a heating system during the winter and a 35 kW Li–Br absorption chiller during the summer period to cool part of an office building.The improvements obtained using control based on critical radiation and a variable flow mass have been compared on the solar plant with a conventional constant flow control. In the same way, the improvements obtained in the yields of a cooling production plant have been compared when programming three different controls: the first one with fixed flow masses, the second adapting the temperature on the condenser as a function of the generator temperature (constant flow mass), and the third adapting the condenser temperature and the flow mass on the generator as a function of the system loads.