Modeling and Predictive Control of Mixed-Mode Buildings with MatLab/GenOpt

The paper presents a transient multi-zone thermal model and anticipatory control strategies for a building with mixed-mode cooling. The model is based on the thermal network representation with advective heat transfer for modeling the heat exchange due to air flow between thermal zones. It is developed in Matlab, which is coupled with GenOpt as an optimizer. The paper presents results of simulations which model the performance of night cooling using "offline" predictive control strategies. Results show that the cooling load can be efficiently reduced by following the sequences based on anticipatory control techniques. The impact of building design parameters on the development of model-predictive control (MPC) strategies and the decisions made by the MPC controller are also discussed.