Development and implementation of supply-based feedback controls for energy-efficient and grid-interactive cooling management over entire building daily cycle

Air-conditioning systems account for a large portion of energy usage, making their effective control vital for overall building energy performance. Conventional process control strategies utilized in building air-conditioning systems adopt “demand-based” feedback control. However, they fail to properly manage the cooling distribution when the cooling supply is insufficient. Reconfigurable feedback control for supply-based cooling management has shown its effectiveness in addressing this problem. However, when and how buildings can benefit from supply-based cooling management in their entire daily cycle are not investigated, and the practical implementation of supply-based cooling management in building automation systems is still a major challenge. This study, therefore, proposes the strategies implementing the reconfigurable feedback control for supply-based cooling management in the entire building daily cycle, including demand limiting, morning start and soft stop. A hardware-in-the-loop test platform, involving typical digital controllers commonly used in practice, is developed for validation tests. Test results show that the reconfigurable supply-based feedback control method can be deployed conveniently in today's practical building automation systems. 9.1 % and 13.3 % of energy savings can be achieved during the morning start and soft stop periods respectively. The power demand can be reduced by 30.8 % during the demand limiting period. •Reconfigurable feedback control is adopted for supply-based cooling management.•Supply-based feedback control strategies are developed for three typical situations.•Reconfigurable feedback control is implemented and tested in field controllers.•Building energy efficiency and energy flexibility can be significantly improved.