Control of air-conditioning system for load management

Abstract

The cooling system is one of the major and critical energy consuming loads in any premise. Efficient energy management of this critical load is important to achieve economic operation. Controlling the air conditioning (AC) system allows to reduce the peak consumption, indirectly the electricity bills. Due to privacy concerns, users’ participation and limitation of AC’s program interfaces is major obstacles in load management. In order to maintain the indoor comfort level and working efficiency, the users’ temperature set point is controlled by an adaptive control algorithm. Changing the AC’s temperature set-point into multiple time slot show the significant potential in electricity savings. Simulation model using PID controller based on load profile of ACs’ installed at Jabatan Penyiaran Negeri Johor will be conducted to determine the effectiveness of proposed control strategy. Then, field measurement is done based on group of AC’s unit and individual by setting its temperature set-point and operation time without any changes in comfort level. Both simulation and field measurement results show significantly peak load reduction of 56% which lead to lowering the overall electricity bill of premises.