Smart control in residential heating and cooling systems

The residential heating and cooling sector has been increasingly electrifying, predominantly using electrically driven heat pumps (HP) in combination with thermal/electrical energy storage systems. While these developments contribute to increased renewable and low carbon energy shares in the sector, exploiting the full potential of the technology requires a smart control of these systems that can account for predicted renewable energy availability in the future and the corresponding HP system performance.

A recent study published on the Springer Journal "Optimization and Engineering" developed dynamic programming based method for optimal control of a cascaded heat pump system with thermal energy storage.

"This publication demonstrates the effectiveness of smart control in residential heating and cooling systems, leading to increased efficiency and reduced energy consumption. Our simplified models aligned well with the complex TRNSYS equivalents, consistently outperforming standard control logics in year-round simulations. This paper highlights novel solutions tailored for the residential building sector, an area that has previously been underexplored in research" says Tim Diller, first author of the article.

The article has been published thanks to the work of four Eurac Research´s researchers in collaboration with Prof. Gregor Henze, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Link to the article