Optimizing Energy Consumption of Hot Water System in Buildings with Solar Thermal Systems

By Wen-Tai Li, Kannan Thirugnanam, Wayes Tushar, Chau Yuen, Kristin L. Wood. 2017

4 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper investigates the operation of a solar thermal system in a building, and seeks to craft a solution that would reduce the cost of electricity to the building manager, while concurrently ensuring that the water demand and the temperature of water are conform to the requirement of the building occupants. In particular, two energy management mechanisms are studies for controlling the multiple heat pumps that are connected to the solar thermal system for providing the system with heat when there is not enough solar energy. In this context, two control strategies are proposed, on-demanding control (ODC) and optimal day-Ahead scheduling (ODS) with different degrees of information such as the water demand, weather, and so on. Moreover, three different types of scenarios are considered based on solar energy generation pattern and hot water demand of a commercial facility, and optimal number and operation schedules of heat pumps are identified for each of the scenario. It is shown that the ODS approach is more effective in saving energy and related costs in comparison with the systems ODC approach if the information of the weather conditions and hot demands are available for next 24 hours, and the performance improvement is corroborated numerically.

Subfields: Building and Construction, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Ocean Engineering

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In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

  1. Billy Pik Lik Lau
  2. U-Xuan Tan
  3. Yuren Zhou
  4. Meng Zhang
  5. Naveed Ul L. Hassan
  6. Marakkalage Sumudu Hasala
  7. Chau Yuen

In Ocean Engineering

  1. Chau Yuen

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