Henze 1997

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Development of a Predictive Optimal Controller for

Thermal Energy Storage Systems
a b c
Gregor P. Henze , Robert H. Dodier & Moncef Krarti
a
Johnson Controls , Essen, Germany
b
Building Systems Program , University of Colorado , Boulder, CO
c
CEAE Department , Joint Center for Energy Management, University of Colorado
Published online: 28 Feb 2011.
To cite this article: Gregor P. Henze , Robert H. Dodier & Moncef Krarti (1997) Development of a Predictive Optimal
Controller for Thermal Energy Storage Systems, HVAC&R Research, 3:3, 233-264
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10789669.1997.10391376
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Table of Contents
VOL. 3, NO. 3 HVAC&R RESEARCH JULY 1997
Development of a Predictive Optimal Controller

for Thermal Energy Storage Systems
Gregor P. Henze, Ph.D. Robert H. Dodier, Ph.D. Moncef Krarti, Ph.D.
Assoc. Member ASHRAE
This paper describes the development and simulation of a predictive optimal controller for ther-
mal energy storage systems. The “optimal” strategy minimizes the cost of operating the cooling
plant over the simulation horizon. The particular case of a popular ice storage system (ice-on-coil
with internal melt) was investigated in a simulation environment. Various predictor models were
analyzed with respect to their performance in forecasting cooling load data and information on
ambient conditions (dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures). The predictor model provides load and
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weather information to the optimal controller in discrete time steps. An optimal storage charging
and discharging strategy was planned at every time step over a fixed look-ahead time window
utilizing newly available information. The first action of the optimal sequence of actions was exe-
cuted over the next time step and the planning process was repeated at every following time step.
The effect of the length of the planning horizon was investigated. It was found that short horizons
of one day were only marginally suboptimal relative to one that is optimal over the entire simu-
lation horizon of one week. Various utility rate structures were analyzed to cover a range of
potential real-time pricing scenarios. The predictive optimal controller was then compared to
conventional control heuristics. In summary, it was found that in the presence of complex rate
structures the proposed controller had a significant performance benefit over the conventional
controls, while requiring only a simple predictor.
INTRODUCTION
Thermal energy storage provides the opportunity to reduce the operating costs of cooling
plants in commercial buildings. Though ice storage technology as a popular implementation of
thermal energy storage is the focus of this study, the methodology can be easily extended to
other types of thermal energy storage.
Previous Work
Experience with operating ice storage systems shows that the poor performance of the control
strategies is the source of significant shortfall in the current technology (Akbari and Sezgen
1992, Guven and Flynn 1992, Tran et al. 1989). The best-known control mechanism for these
systems is chiller-priority. This simple heuristic consists of using direct cooling (no storage
usage) anytime during off-peak hours, and also during on-peak hours (a) provided that the cur-
rent cooling load can be met by a chiller that has been downsized in capacity, or (b) while an
imposed electrical demand limit has not yet been exceeded by the cooling plant. Otherwise, the
storage provides the remaining cooling capacity. In this study, the cooling plant consists of one
chiller for both chilled-water and icemaking modes, pumps, fans, cooling tower, and all other
equipment needed to provide cooling as sketched in Figure 3. Though chiller-priority can be an
appropriate strategy under peak cooling load conditions, it generally makes poor use of the
Gregor P. Henze is a research engineer with Johnson Controls, Essen, Germany. Robert H. Dodier is a Ph.D. student
in the Building Systems Program, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO. Moncef Krarti is an assistant professor in the
CEAE Department, Joint Center for Energy Management, University of Colorado.
233
234 HVAC&R RESEARCH
available storage during swing seasons. With chiller-priority being the most widely used control,
the potential of ice storage systems is only partially harnessed.
Recognizing the need for research in the area of optimal control for thermal storage systems,
various approaches have been proposed. However, the term “optimal control” has been used
rather loosely when referring to the control of ice storage systems. Spethmann’s treatment of the
optimization problem (Spethmann 1989) included the proper consideration of utility rates, cost of
ice-making as a function of evaporator temperature, shape of cooling load profile, and many more
desirable features. Rather than finding the solution to a strictly variational problem, he treated
optimal control as the problem of developing a knowledge base for a real-time expert system.
Similarly, Knebel (1990) interpreted optimal control for an ice harvesting system as the correct
variation of build and defrost time as a function of compressor capacity and saturated discharge
pressure of the refrigerant. Braun (1992) and Drees and Braun (1996), on the other hand, carried
out simulations that are in accordance with the strict mathematical definition of optimal control.
Assuming known load profiles, Braun carried out daily simulations comparing chiller-priority,
storage-priority, and optimal control, where the latter was based on the minimization of either
energy charges or peak demand charges. Drees and Braun, in addition to minimizing either daily
energy or demand charges, investigated an objective function that minimizes energy cost while
preventing the demand cost from exceeding a predefined target. They also developed a heuristic
control strategy that is simple to implement yet approaches optimal performance.
Kintner-Meyer and Emery (1995) investigated the benefits of optimal control minimizing
daily (24 h) operating costs for a large office building by adjusting indoor air temperature and
humidity setpoints as well as cooling plant operating parameters. Two sources of thermal energy
storage were considered: an ice storage tank (ice-on-coil with internal melt), and the thermal
capacitance of the building mass (heavy, light, and ultralight construction). The investigation
therefore linked the problem of dynamic building control (building precooling or preheating)
with the problem of cool storage control. Thus, the thermal building response and building loads
were not treated as external constraints on the optimization problem, but rather as an integral
part of the problem of HVAC control with TES. The study therefore effectively compares the
individual and combined effects of building internal mass and cool storage on load shifting and
peak power reduction. Compared to the base case of using direct cooling only, they found that
significant operating cost savings and electrical demand reduction can be achieved through
early-morning ventilation utilizing free cooling and by shifting cooling loads to off-peak peri-
ods. The investigators concluded that optimal building control is most effective in dry climates
with large diurnal temperature swings, in the presence of utility rates strongly encouraging
load-shifting, and when cold storage systems allow more effective load-shifting than pre-cool-
ing of the building alone.
Driven by the need for a better understanding of the behavior of ice storage systems in gen-
eral, a simulation environment was developed by Henze et al. (1997) to investigate a wide range
of key parameters influencing the system’s operating cost. The optimal control strategy to mini-
mize the total electricity cost, was developed and validated, combining energy and demand
charges. Based on building cooling loads and weather data, the optimal control strategy properly
accounted for the effects of all environmental variables including utility rate structure and cool-
ing plant characteristics. This optimal strategy was used as a reference against which conven-
tional control strategies were compared. Three conventional control strategies were modeled:
Chiller-priority, constant-proportion, and storage-priority control. Chiller-priority and con-
stant-proportion control are both instantaneous. Like optimal control, storage-priority control
requires short-term load forecasting. As a fundamental assumption, perfect predictions of
weather and load variables were assumed for both storage-priority and optimal control in the
study of Henze (1996).
VOLUME 3, NUMBER 3, JULY 1997 235
In particular, Henze (1996) found that, under favorable conditions such as (a) high cost incen-
tives to shift loads to off-peak hours or, (b) a small energy penalty for operating the chiller in
icemaking mode, an ice storage system with conventional controls can provide considerable cost
savings. However, as soon as the utility incentive for load shifting is reduced, or the use of the
ice storage is associated with a significant increase in total energy use, only optimal control is
able to yield energy cost savings. In all cases, optimal control was shown to succeed in reducing
operating cost, even under the most adverse conditions. Among the conventional control strate-
gies, storage-priority performs the best under the premise that the cooling loads over the next
on-peak period are always perfectly known. Under real-world conditions, however, loads even a
few hours into the future cannot be predicted perfectly.
Scope of Present Work

The present work investigates the potential benefits of optimal control for ice storage systems
under real-time pricing. In a deregulated environment, the cost of energy will most likely change
on an hourly basis. The work rests on the assumption that real-time pricing utility rates, unlike
current rate structures, contain no demand charges, that the cost of electrical energy varies
smoothly in daily cycles (though discretely from hour to hour) and will only be known over a
short time window, e.g. the next 24 hours. As the results by Henze (1996) indicated, optimal
control is significantly superior when load-shifting incentives are weak. When the cost of energy
changes in a smooth fashion rather than the current step changes from low off-peak to high
on-peak rates, optimal control is expected to better weigh these varying cost effects since con-
ventional controls all rely on an unambiguous separation between on-peak and off-peak periods.
SYSTEM MODELING
Building Type
The building investigated in this study is a large 20-floor office building. The cooling load
profile and profile of ambient climatic conditions of this site is part of a unique commercial
cooling load library established by the Energy Center of Wisconsin (ECW 1994). The site is
located in the state of Wisconsin. The building has a floor area of 350,000 ft2 (32 500 m2), 2,800
employees, 85 hours of operation, and is located near a lake. The beginning and end of the occu-
pied periods in the particular sites were not available from the source. Yet, for the controllers
formulated in this investigation, this is not essential information and the times of the on-peak
and off-peak periods suffice.
The weekly cooling load profile shown in Figure 1 is that during which the peak cooling load
occurs and it occurred in the month of August 1990. Similarly, Figure 2 shows a graph of the
weekly wet-bulb temperature profile for the investigated site for the same time period as the
cooling loads. The realistic cooling plant model used in the presented work incorporates a
water-cooled condenser whose behavior is better modeled using wet-bulb rather than dry-bulb
temperatures.
Base case
To make meaningful comparisons, the base case refers to that cooling system that experiences
the same cooling load and weather profiles and uses the same chiller and air-handler subject to
the same utility rate structure as the corresponding ice storage system. The only differences are
that (1) the chiller is sized to fully meet the peak cooling load, i.e. it is not downsized as for the
case of chiller-priority, and (2) there is no ice storage available. It represents the standard case of
a cooling system without cold storage.
236 HVAC&R RESEARCH
Figure 1. Cooling load profile of large 20-floor office building
Figure 2. Wet-bulb temperature profile for 20-floor office building investigated

Thermal Storage System

The most important feature of any storage device is its ability to bridge a temporal gap
between supply and demand. In a cooling plant without thermal storage, the cooling load is met
through direct cooling; the corresponding power consumption of the plant cannot be postponed
to later periods when electricity is cheaper. In a thermal energy storage system, the temporal
occurrence of electrical cooling-related loads can be separated from that of the thermal (cooling)
loads. Consequently, there is a flexibility in the choice of the cooling source: either direct cool-
ing from the chiller, discharging the storage tank, or a combination of both. At night, when cool-
ing is often not required, the tank is recharged.
To describe the storage, one state variable, the state-of-charge x of the storage tank has to be
introduced. The primary control variable u is defined as the rate change of the state-of-charge x,
u = dx/dt. At any point in time, the question is to either charge, discharge or remain inactive as
expressed by the control variable u.
State transitions of the thermal storage system regardless of the selected ice storage model are
described in discrete time by
∆t
x k + 1 = x k + u k --------------- (1)
SCAP
subject to the constraints
x min ≤ x k ≤ x max (2)
where SCAP is the capacity of the ice storage; the control variable u is subject to the constraints
u min ,k ≤ u k ≤ u max ,k (3)
where for all ice storage models umin,k is the negative value of the maximal discharging rate at
time k, and umax,k is the maximal charging rate at time k. Several components affect these con-
trol constraints. As an example, the bounds on the action variable are a function of the
state-of-charge x of the tank, i.e. controls u that lead to states-of-charge less than xmin or greater
than xmax are inadmissible. The final control constraints, however, depend on the underlying ice
storage model. In the case of the basic plant model employed, the charge and discharge capaci-
ties depended only on available ice inventory and current cooling load, while for the realistic
plant model, charge and discharge capacities were modeled as a function of the ice storage char-
acteristics, and ice inventory. Both the basic and realistic models will be described below.
Design Parameters
Certain design choices had to be made to fix the cooling plant capacities. The ice storage tank
was designed to store up to four times the peak cooling load Qpeak over the extent of one hour
(Dt), i.e.
SCAP = 4Q peak ∆t (4)
while the chiller was sized to fully meet the peak load, i.e.
CCAP = Q peak (5)
For the control strategy chiller-priority, however, the chiller was downsized by 25%, i.e.,
CCAP = 0.75 Qpeak.
238 HVAC&R RESEARCH
Cooling Plant
Two cooling plant models with ice storage systems of disparate complexity were used
throughout the present study. Both models are steady-state, and the dynamics associated with
changing from one charging/discharging rate at the end of each hour to another cannot be cap-
tured. However, the time increment of one hour is significantly larger than the cooling plant’s
time constant including the ice storage system.
Basic Plant Model. In this simplistic model, it was assumed that the cooling plant operated
with a constant efficiency of EIR(chw) in the chilled-water mode and with a reduced efficiency
EIR(ice) in the ice-making mode, i.e., EIR(chw) < EIR(ice). EIR has dimensions of (electric energy
consumed/unit cooling load). The higher EIR in icemaking mode reflects the increased power
consumption when providing cooling at subfreezing temperatures. These values lump together
the efficiencies of all components of the cooling plant. The total power consumption Pk of the
basic plant was
 Q ch ,k EIR ( ice ) if u > 0 , i.e. charging

Pk =  (6)
 Q ch ,k EIR ( chw ) if u ≤ 0 , i.e. discharging
where the chiller load Qch,k is defined as the sum of the cooling load Qk and the discharging/
charging rate uk,
Q ch ,k = Q k + u k (7)
For the basic plant model, the charge and discharge capacities depended only on available ice
inventory and current cooling load. The constraints on the control variable for the basic plant
model are formulated as
u min = max { – Q k, u x = x min } (8)

k+1
and
u max = min { CCAP – Q k, u x = x max } (9)
k +1
where u x = x denotes the control action u that leads to a state-of-charge x′ when operating
k+1 max
the cooling system over the next hour (k ® k + 1) at exactly that control u. Thus, no actions can
be taken that would lead to states-of-charge outside the limits. Furthermore, the (fixed) capacity
of the chiller CCAP minus the current load Qk defines the maximal charging rate umax,k; i.e.,
how much can be charged after meeting the load.
Realistic Plant Model. The realistic cooling plant model used in this project was a modular
steady-state model that computed the power consumption of each plant component (Henze
1996). The correlations used in the plant model were based on the building simulation program
BLAST (1994). The components included an air-handling unit, an ice storage system, a chiller,
a cooling tower, and all required pumps and fans, as illustrated in Figure 3. The modularity
allowed one to switch easily between one of three ice storage system types (ice-on-coil with
internal melt, ice-on-coil with external melt, and a dynamic ice harvester) as well as between
one of three chiller compressor types (centrifugal, reciprocating, and screw compressors).
The plant model determined the component power consumption in response to a set of exter-
nal parameters and a set of plant parameters. The external parameters were the cooling load Qk
at hour k, the ambient wet-bulb temperature at that hour Twb,k, the state-of-charge xk , and the
Figure 3. Diagram of cooling plant configuration

charging/discharging rate uk . In addition, a set of plant parameters governed the operation of the
cooling plant. For the realistic plant model used in this analysis, the plant parameters included
either one or two temperature setpoints of the cooling plant depending on the mode of operation.
These cooling plant temperature setpoints were the chilled water supply temperature leaving the
evaporator, the chilled water supply temperature entering the air handling unit, and the supply
air temperature. They were adjusted in a separate optimization step (plant optimization) to mini-
mize the total power consumption for the current set of external parameters. Only the simulta-
neous cost and plant optimization allows the determination of an optimal control trajectory in
which each charging/discharging control is associated with the minimal attainable cooling plant
power consumption. When evaluating conventional control strategies, the plant power consump-
tion will also be the smallest attainable for the chosen control action u under the given condi-
tions. The plant optimization is described in detail by Henze (1996).
In the case of a realistic cooling plant model, constraints on the heat transfer capabilities of
the thermal storage system further restrict the admissible values of u. These additional con-
straints include the ability to absorb or reject heat as expressed by umin,TES(x) and umax,TES(x),
respectively. These limits depend on the selected thermal storage system type and the
state-of-charge x. The constraints on the control variable for the realistic plant model are formu-
lated as
u min = max { – Q k, u x = x min, u min ,TES ( x ) } (10)

k+1
and
u max = min { u x = x max , u max ,TES ( x ) } (11)
k+1
Initially, the plant model determines the peak ice storage charging rate umax,TES(x) and peak
discharging rate umin,TES(x) as the upper and lower limit on the control variable u. The exact cal-
culation of umax,TES(x) and umin,TES(x) requires the solution of multiple nonlinear equations gov-
erning the heat transfer between the ice storage, chiller, and air handler. The maximal possible
240 HVAC&R RESEARCH
discharge rate umin,TES(x) occurs when the cooling load is satisfied by the storage device alone,
when both loads, the ice storage load Q· ice and air handler load Q· l are still balanced, i.e.
Q· ice = Q· l. The maximal charge umax,TES(x) can be found when the chiller is making ice and
meeting the cooling load at the maximal possible rate, i.e. as long as Q· ch = Q· l + Q· ice is satis-
fied. The chiller performance is modeled according to BLAST (1994) using quadratic expres-
sions with coefficients taken from manufacturers’ data. For details on the determination of the
charge and discharge capacity limits for ice-on-coil systems with external and internal melt as
well as ice harvesters refer to Henze (1996).
CONVENTIONAL CONTROL STRATEGIES

This study analyzes various control strategies for ice storage systems which are a popular
choice of thermal energy storage technology. However, the controls are not necessarily limited
to the application of ice storage systems. Two instantaneous, and one predictive conventional
control strategy have been investigated. The instantaneous strategies only require the knowledge
of current quantities such as cooling load and control limits.
Chiller-Priority Control
The simplest of the existing control strategies for thermal energy storage is chiller-priority
control. Here, the chiller runs continuously under conventional chiller control (direct cooling)
possibly subject to a demand-limit while the storage provides the remaining cooling capacity as
required.
 u max ,k if k is off-peak

uk =  0 if k is on-peak and CCAP k ≥ Q k (12)

 u max ,k if k is on-peak and CCAP k < Q k ( Note: u max < 0 in this case )
where uk is the charging/discharging rate, CCAPk is the reduced (75%) chiller capacity, and Qk
is the cooling load each taken at hour k.
The simplicity lies in the fact that the conventional chiller control is not altered when yielding
high average part loads and a smooth demand curve, however, there is the disadvantage that the
meltdown of the ice is not controlled to allow for maximal demand reduction. In addition, the
time-of-day dependent energy rate structure in ($/unit electrical energy consumed) is not
accounted for, i.e. load-shifting performance is inadequate.
Constant-Proportion Control
This control strategy implies that the storage meets a constant fraction fQ of the cooling load
under all conditions. Thus, neither the chiller nor the storage has priority when providing cool-
ing. This simple control strategy provides a greater demand reduction than chiller-priority con-
trol since the chiller capacity fraction used for a particular month will track the fraction of the
annual cooling design load the building experiences during that month. For example, in a month
in which 50% of the annual design load occurs, only 50% of the chiller capacity will be
requested.
uk =  (13)
 max { – f Q Q k, u min ,k } if k is on-peak
Constant-proportion control is rather easy to implement by assigning a fixed fraction of the

total temperature difference between brine supply and return flow to be realized by the storage,
and the remainder by the chiller. Finding the best load fraction fQ for each application is a matter
of trial and error. Caution should be exercised so that the chiller can always meet the remaining
load fraction, i.e.
( 1 – f Q )Q max ≤ CCAP nom
or in other terms
CCAP
f Q ≥ 1 – ----------------
Q peak
where CCAP nom is the nominal chiller capacity.
Storage-Priority Control
As the name reflects, storage-priority control requires melting as much ice as possible during
the on-peak period. It is generally defined as that control strategy that aims at fully discharging
the available storage capacity over the next available on-peak period. Therefore, this control
strategy requires that the state of charge at the end of the charging period is zero, and that the
sequence of the chiller and storage be specified. However, a detailed description of a generalized
implementation of storage priority control is not available (Tamblyn 1985).
In the present study the following implementation is suggested: The chiller is base loaded
during off-peak hours to recharge the ice storage for the next on-peak period. The chiller oper-
ates in one of two modes during the on-peak period. The chiller operates either in Mode 0 at a
reduced capacity A0 in parallel with the storage during on-peak hours so that at the end of the
on-peak period the storage inventory is just depleted. If this is not possible without prematurely
depleting storage, the control switches to Mode 1 and the storage provides a constant proportion
A1 of the load in each on-peak hour similar to constant-proportion control. Both parameters, A0
and A1 are determined from predicted cooling loads over the next on-peak period. The on-peak
period used throughout the analysis regardless of whether time-of-use or real-time pricing rates
are used, is from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. during weekdays. All other hours are off-peak.
The tank discharge/charge rates are determined by

uk =  0
A – Q k if k is on-peak and discharge mode is 0 (14)

 max { – A 1 Q k, u min ,k } if k is on-peak and discharge mode is 1
The chiller capacity A0 is computed from
1  N–1 SCAP 
A 0 = ----  ∑
Q
N  i=0 k′ + i
– x k′ --------------- 
∆t 
(15)
where N is the number of hours in the on-peak period and k′ is the first hour therein. The con-
stant proportion A1 in turn is determined from
242 HVAC&R RESEARCH
SCAP
x k ′ ---------------
∆t
A 1 = --------------------------------- (16)
∑i=0
N – 1 Qk ′ + i
Refer to Henze (1996) for a more detailed description of storage-priority control and graphs
of the performance and behavior of chiller-priority, constant-proportion, and storage-priority
controls.
OPTIMAL CONTROL
Optimal control in the current context is that sequence of controls that minimizes the operat-
ing cost of the cooling plant over the simulation period
∑
K
J = J ( u 1, u 2, ..., u K ) = r k P k ∆t (17)
k =0
where K is the total number of hours in the simulation period, rk is the cost of electrical energy at
K
hour k, and Pk is the cooling plant electrical power consumption. The sequence { rk } k=0 is the
cost of electrical energy as driven by real-time pricing in a deregulated utility environment.
Several periodic utility rate structures with varying amplitude were investigated as shown in
Figure 4. Note that rk is only an energy charge; in the real-time pricing scenario we have investi-
gated, there are no demand charges. For all rate structures and for all control strategies, on-peak
period is defined as the time between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, with off-peak
period being the remaining hours and weekend. To function properly, all three conventional
controls require information on the beginning and end of on-peak periods, as indicated by
Figure 4. Rate structures used in this study

Equations (12), (13), and (14). Times of actual occupancy are not required, since the discharge
rates are adjusted as a function of the current cooling load.
The real-time pricing scenarios in this work were chosen for illustrative purposes and no
claim is made that these rate structures will be typical once utilities are deregulated. Rather, the
examined rate structures represent idealized profiles of what the authors consider probable real-
izations.
Dynamic Programming
The task of minimizing operating cost J is framed as a sequential decision-making process of
decision variable u. Dynamic programming, an optimization technique commonly used for this
type of problem, was introduced by Richard Bellman in 1957. Bellman stated his Principle of
Optimality: that the optimal solution to a K-step process must come from the optimal solution of
a (K - 1)-step process that is based on the optimal outcome of the first step. The solution of one
K-step process is thus found recursively by optimizing K single-step processes.
The basic optimization model has two fundamental features: (1) an underlying discrete-time
dynamic system, and (2) an incrementally additive cost function. The dynamic system has the
general form
x k+1 = f ( x k, u k, w k ) (18)
where x is the state of the system, u is the control, and w is a random disturbance. Consider a
process in which the transition from one state xj at time j through the control uj is associated with
the instantaneous cost
l ( x j, u j, w j ) (19)
Then the total expected cost of starting at time k and ending at time K can be expressed by
∑ E[ l ( xj, u j, wj ) ]
K
J = (20)
j=k
where the expectation in this and other equations is taken with respect to the disturbance wj. It is
assumed there exists a sequence of controls u, minimizing J, thus an optimal cost-to-go function
exists for each state x and time k,
 K 
I ( x ,k ) = min
uj ∈ U, j= k, ..., K
J = min
u j ∈ U, j=k, ... , K
 ∑
j=k
E [ l ( x j, u j, w j ) ] 

(21)
Here U is the constrained set of admissible controls. In deriving the desired iterative functional
equation, the optimal cost-to-go may be rewritten as
 
∑
K
I ( x ,k ) = min  E [ l ( x k, u k, w k ) ] + E [ l ( x j, u j, w j ) ]  (22)
u j ∈ U , j=k, ..., K  j= k+1 
where x = xk. This expression is equivalent to
 
∑
K
I ( x ,k ) = min min  E [ l ( x k, u k, w k ) ] + E [ l ( x j, u j, w j ) ]  (23)
uj ∈ U u j ∈ U, j =k + 1, …, K  j=k +1 
244 HVAC&R RESEARCH
Consider, for the moment, only the inner minimization over u j ∈ U , j = k + 1 ,… ,K . Since
E [ l ( x k ,u k ,w k ) ] does not depend on uk+1, uk+2, uk+3, ... , the inner minimization becomes
∑ E [ l ( xj, uj, wj ) ]
K
E [ l ( x k, u k, w k ) ] + min (24)
u ∈ U , j=k +1, ..., K j= k+1
j
Now employing the general state transition equation f, the second argument in Equation (24)
can be expressed as
 K
min
u j ∈ U, j=k+ 1, ..., K
=  ∑
 j= k+1
E [ l ( x j, u j, w j ) ]
(25)
= I ( x k +1, k + 1 )
= I ( f ( x k, u k, w k ), k + 1 )
Summarizing Equations (23), (24), and (25),
I ( x, k ) = min { E [ l ( x k, u k, w k ) ] + I ( f ( x k, u k, w k ), k + 1 ) } (26)
uj ∈ U
This is an iterative equation that can be used to determine I(x,k) for all admissible x, entirely
from the knowledge of I(x,k + 1). The starting point of the iteration is the terminal cost I (x,K),
which expresses the preference for a particular final state x. For example, a full storage may be
preferred and thus all I(x ¹ 1,K) will be given a very high value. In the present work, I (x,K) = 0
for all states of charge x, thus the final state at the end of the planning horizon is free; no final
state is preferred.
In summary, it was found that the minimal cost at state x and stage k, I(x,k), was determined
by minimizing the sum of the cost at the present stage k, and the minimal cost in going to the end
of the process from the resulting state at the next stage k + 1, as expressed by Equation (26).
Application of the Certainty Equivalence Principle

In the given case, the discrete-time dynamic system represented by Equation (1) is only a
function of the state-of-charge and the control variable (both scalar), and not of the external dis-
turbance wk,
∆t
x k+1 = x k + u k --------------- = f ( x k, u k ) (27)
SCAP
and is therefore deterministic. The instantaneous cost l of Equation (19) is the cost of electrical
energy consumed by the cooling plant over the next time step,
l ( x k, u k, w k ) = r k P k ∆t (28)
As supported by the findings in Section 6, the optimization is only carried out over short hori-
zons, over which—even in the case of real-time pricing—the cost of energy rk will be known.
Thus, rk is a deterministic variable.
The cooling plant power consumption Pk is (in the most general case) a function of the control
u, i.e. charging/discharging rate, and the state-of-charge x (the state variable). Both of these vari-
ables are assumed to be known through noise-free observation. Furthermore, the performance of
the cooling plant is affected by ambient conditions (as they affect the thermodynamic process
efficiency) as well as chiller part-load performance. The condenser temperature (the upper pro-
cess temperature) is the sum of either the ambient dry-bulb temperature Tdb for an air-cooled
condenser or the ambient wet-bulb temperature Twb for a water-cooled condenser, plus the cor-
responding condenser approach. It is assumed that the part-load performance can be computed
from the chiller cooling capacity CCAP and the chiller cooling load Qch. The chiller load is a
function of the cooling load Qk and the charging/discharging rate uk. Ambient temperature and
cooling load are modeled as a deterministic signal plus an uncorrelated Gaussian noise term.
(However, previous work by Dodier (1995) suggested that this noise model is not as accurate as
a correlated noise model; for simplicity, the uncorrelated noise model was used.) The distur-
bance wk comprises the ambient temperature and cooling load,
T 
wk =  k
(29)
 Q k
where Tk is either dry-bulb or wet-bulb temperature, depending on the condenser type

employed. The power consumption function Pk = P(xk, uk, wk) is a mapping established by the
model described previously in the Cooling Plant section. As mentioned there, the basic plant
model does not account for weather influences and thus wk = Qk for the basic model.
To apply Equation (26), the expected value of the instantaneous cost l has to be determined.
For the basic plant model and the realistic cooling plant model, the expectation has to be taken
over the cooling plant power consumption given the distribution of cooling load at hour k or the
joint distribution of temperature and cooling load at hour k, respectively
E [ l ( x k, u k, w k ) ] = E [ r k P ( x k, u k, w k ) ∆t ] = r k E [ P ( x k, u k, w k ) ∆t ] (30)
As minimizing over this expected value could be difficult and time-consuming, an investiga-
tion was carried out to find a convenient approximation of E[P(x,u,w)]. For smooth functions,
the expected value of a function of a random variable is the function evaluated at the mean of the
variable plus higher order terms.
1
E [ g ( w ) ] = g ( w ) + --- Trace ( ∇∇g ( w )Σ w ) + ... (31)
2
where ÑÑ g is the Hessian matrix and Sw is the covariance of w. In our investigation we consid-
ered a first-order approximation,
E [ P ( x, u, w ) ] ≈ P ( x, u, w ) (32)
The left-hand side was estimated by Monte-Carlo integration,
∫–∞ P ( x, u, w )p ( w ) dw ≈ ---R ∑
∞ 1 R
E [ P ( x, u, w ) ] = P ( x, u, w̃ i ) ≡ Ẽ [ P ( x, u, w ) ] (33)
i=1
where w̃ i is a simulated disturbance,
2
w̃ = w + η, η ∼ N ( 0, σ ) (34)
246 HVAC&R RESEARCH
and R is some large number of realizations. The assumption underlying this simulation is that
weather and load processes are composed of a deterministic signal plus uncorrelated, additive,
Gaussian noise. The noise magnitude s was chosen differently for temperature than for load.
To determine whether the approximation in Equation (32) is valid, large noise levels in the
temperature and cooling load processes were assumed. For temperature, the standard deviation
of the temperature noise sT was taken as the standard deviation of the available historical data.
This assumption is conservative since even a simple predictor model will predict better than the
average. For cooling loads, the RMS error of a two-component harmonic model (168-hour fun-
damental and 1-hour first harmonic) fitted to the cooling load data of a 20-floor office building
by least-squares was used as an approximation of the standard deviation of the load noise sQ.
With R = 200 realizations, sT = 7, and sQ = 78, the analysis showed that for a large number of
cases, the power consumption P evaluated at the mean disturbance is on average 3.5% below the
Monte-Carlo approximated expected power consumption of Equation (33), with a standard devi-
ation of 2.6%. “On average” in this context refers to a representative range of x and u values. As
expected, for lower levels of noise in both stochastic variables, the approximation of Equation
(32) becomes even better and is consequently applied to the present optimization problem.
The modified cost function that will be minimized is therefore
∑ l ( xj, u j, wj )
K
J̃ = (35)
j=k
and the new iterative function for the approximated optimal cost-to-go becomes
Ĩ ( x, k ) = min {l ( x k, u k, w k ) + Ĩ [ f ( x k, u k ), k + 1 ] } (36)
uk ∈ U
If the optimal policy is unaffected regardless of whether or not the disturbances or their means
are used, the certainty equivalence principle is said to hold (Bertsekas 1995). A certainty equiv-
alence controller denotes the suboptimal control that applies at each stage of the control that
would be optimal if some or all of the stochastic variables were fixed at their expected value.
In this analysis, closed-loop optimization is employed, i.e. the certainty equivalence control-
ler carries out an optimization over a predefined planning horizon L and of the generated opti-
mal strategy only the first action is executed. At the next time step the process is repeated. The
final control strategy of this near-optimal controller over a total simulation horizon of K steps is
thus composed of K initial control actions of K optimal strategies of horizon L, where L < K.
This ensures that newly available, improved forecasts of future variables are always utilized. As
an example, if the simulation lasts from t0 until t0 + 100Dt, then the certainty of variables at
t0 + 50Dt is most probably better at t0 + 45Dt than at t0 + 20Dt and it is useful to incorporate
updated forecasts along the way.
Thus, the investigated implementation of optimal control for the thermal energy storage prob-
lem is a certainty-equivalence, closed-loop control. Throughout thermal energy storage litera-
ture, the term optimal control is used with different degrees of rigor. Even though the need for
discretization in dynamic programming and optimization over shorter horizons than the simula-
tion period are sources of suboptimality in the optimization algorithm, the solutions are optimal
in the mathematical sense, and the term optimal control is retained. This is to avoid confusion
with control heuristics that have been termed “near-optimal” although they are not based on
mathematical optimization.
PREDICTION OF FUTURE DISTURBANCES

The “disturbances” that affect our cooling system are the ambient conditions and cooling
loads, which in turn are determined for the most part by the number of people in the building. If
we knew the exact cooling loads that will occur during the planning horizon, we could use
dynamic programming to find the best course of action (ignoring discretization problems). In
reality one can only guess future loads, and the costs incurred will increase with decreasing
accuracy of predictions. In this section, the load forecasting models which were studied are pre-
sented. In each case, a year of hourly data was available for model building (ECW 1994). About
one week of data were withheld each month, and models fitted on the remaining data. Some of
the withheld data were used to compare prediction schemes.
As this is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of prediction methods, only a representa-
tive few are presented here. The prediction models used in this research range from the very
simple (unbiased random walk model) through the less simple (bin predictor and harmonic mod-
els) to the complex (autoregressive neural network). Due to its greater complexity and additional
input variables, one might expect the neural network to outperform the simpler models, as
indeed it does.
Unbiased Random Walk Model

This predictor is very simple. If the present load is Qt , then we predict that the future loads
Qt+1 , Qt+2 , Qt+2, ... are all equal to Qt . It turns out that this prediction is best in the least-squares
sense if the process generating the sequence of loads is an unbiased random walk—that is, if the
load at the next hour is with equal probability either somewhat greater or somewhat less than the
present load. This forecasting model is perhaps the simplest interesting model and provides a
base case against which we can test more sophisticated predictors. Despite the simplicity of this
model, substantial cost reduction can be gained by using this model.
Bin Predictor Model

A “bin model” is a simple piecewise constant (and thus nonlinear) model. To set the model
parameters, the input space is divided up into a number of disjointed regions, and the average
value of the output variable over each region is computed. The average of the output variables is
taken from the data used for training; the input regions are fixed and are not modified according
to the training data. If an input falls into a certain region, then the average of that region is the
prediction of the output for the input. The regions are always rectangular sets of the form
[a1,b1] ´ [a2,b2] ´ ... ´ [an,bn], where n is the number of input variables. Thus it is convenient
to represent the bin model as a table or an array which is indexed by the input variables. We
chose to use a bin model for cooling load which included as inputs month, hour of the day, and
temperature. Months and hours of the day were naturally divided into 12 and 24, respectively.
Temperature was divided into 15 equal intervals from 33°F to 97°F (0.55 to 36°C), and a tem-
perature index t = 1, 2,..., 15 was calculated as
τ(T ) = 15 ( T – 33 ) ⁄ ( 97 – 33 ) (37)
(The notation éxù means the least integer greater than or equal to x. No temperatures were out-
side the specified range.)
Future temperatures were predicted using a separate bin model which used only month and
hour of the day as inputs. So future loads were predicted in a two-step process as follows.
T ( m , h ) = T m, h (38)
248 HVAC&R RESEARCH
Q ( m, h ) = Q ( m, h, T ( m, h ) ) = Q m, h, τ ( T ( m, h )) (39)
Here, T and Q are the tables constructed from average values of T and Q, respectively, in the
training data. Subscripts indicate indices into the tables.
More complicated bin models can be imagined. Additional input variables such as wet-bulb
temperature are possible. One might use unequal intervals, or allow the input regions to have
arbitrary shapes, or allow the prediction function over a region to be a more general function
rather than just a constant. Such models are related to so-called “spline” or multi-phase regres-
sions (Seber and Wild 1989), mixtures of experts models (Haykin 1994). Another related model,
the cerebellar model articulatory controller (CMAC), has been applied to building energy use
forecasting (Seem and Braun 1991).
Harmonic Predictor Model

The harmonic predictor models the target time-series as a sum of sine and cosine functions.
For this analysis, one harmonic model for each month of the year was considered; it was found
that this gave a somewhat better fit than a single model based on the same frequency compo-
nents. The harmonic model for dry-bulb temperature T can be expressed as
∑ ( Am, k sin ( ωk t ) ) + ( Bm, k cos ( ωk t ) )

4
T ( m, t ) = γ m + (40)
k=1
Where, m is the month, t is the number of hours since the midnight of January 1, and wk rep-
resents the frequency components of the model, w1 = 2p/8760, w2 = 2p/24, w3 = 2p/12, and w4
= 2p/6. A similar model for the cooling load Q(m,h) was constructed.
The harmonic model of temperature was fitted by solving the least-squares equations for
Equation (40), and the analogous least-squares equations were solved for the cooling load
model. Least-squares is a “slow” way to fit a harmonic model; however, because some data were
withheld for testing purposes, the data do not form an unbroken temporal sequence and so the
Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is not applicable.
Autoregressive Network Predictor Model

The autoregressive neural network model is a nonlinear autoregressive model. That is, the
model takes the form
y ( t ) = F ( x ( t ), y ( t – 1 ), y ( t – 2 ), y ( t – 3 ) , ... ) (41)
where y denotes the output and x denotes the inputs, and the mapping F is given by a neural net-
work. Such a model is a form of recurrent neural network; see Kreider et al. (1995) for an appli-
cation of such networks to an energy prediction task. Past values of the output used as inputs
need not be separated by one time unit (one hour in the work at hand); networks with time lag
outputs separated by 1, 3, and 6 hours were constructed. All networks considered had 6 time lag
inputs altogether. For example, the 3-hour, 6-lag network used as inputs the outputs at times
t - 3, t - 6,..., t - 18. Networks were trained by setting the time-lag inputs to their target val-
ues, instead of using actual network outputs. This training method is called teacher forcing in
neural network parlance. Network outputs were fed back as inputs only when generating predic-
tions from a trained network. Networks were trained by the back-propagation (gradient descent)
algorithm to a local minimum of the training error.
Each network had 11 inputs altogether, including the 6 time-lag outputs. Other inputs
included day of the year and hour of the day, with two input units each. The day of the year k
was given a “clock” representation with a sine and cosine pair:
sin ( 2πk ⁄ 365 ), cos ( 2πk ⁄ 365 ) (42)
Likewise, hour of the day was given a clock representation. Such a representation makes
December 31 and January 1 very similar, likewise 11 p.m. and midnight are very similar. The
other input unit was a weekday/weekend flag (zero or one). There were 15 hidden units with
tanh activation. The single output unit had a linear activation. Each input variable and the sole
output variable were normalized by subtracting its training-set average and dividing by its train-
ing-set standard deviation. This gave variables that were mostly in the range from -1 to +1,
which made the back-propagation algorithm better behaved.
Comparing the various autoregressive networks that were constructed, it was found that a net-
work with time-lag outputs 1 hour apart had small errors for short-term (short look-ahead) pre-
dictions, but errors grew quickly for long-term predictions. With time-lag outputs 6 hours apart,
errors did not grow much as look-ahead increased, but for all look-ahead times errors were fairly
large. Using time-lag outputs 3 hours apart gave the best overall performance over the range of
look-ahead times from zero to 24 hours, and this scheme was therefore chosen to make the pre-
dictions that were used in planning the optimal control.
Comparison of Prediction Models

The prediction errors of the random walk, harmonic, bin, and network prediction models are
compared in Figure 5. In this figure, root mean square error (RMSE) was computed over the
third quarter of the July data, which was withheld from training. It is clear that the autoregres-
sive neural network (6 outputs, 3 hours apart, as inputs) had a substantially lower RMSE than
the other predictors. The RMSE for the network model increases somewhat as the look-ahead
time increases, and seems to saturate after about 18 hours. The harmonic and bin models each
took only time and date as input variables, but the bin model was more accurate, perhaps
because the bin model allows greater flexibility; the data is not quite periodic, hence the har-
monic model is not a good fit. The harmonic and bin models’ RMSE are shown as horizontal
lines because the predictions for these models do not change as the look-ahead time changes;
these models do not take new information into account as time progresses. Not surprisingly, the
random walk prediction is quite accurate for short look-ahead times. For longer times, the
RMSE grows rapidly, although it decreases again as the look-ahead time approaches 24 hours.
This is due to the 24-hour periodic component in the load, which causes a strong correlation in
the load at times t and t + 24.
RESULTS
Limitations
The results in this section and the conclusions drawn on their basis are subject to limitations
that are explicitly noted below.
• The results are the outcome of numerical simulations and not of lab or field experiments.
• In these simulations, the cooling plant is assumed to behave like the quasi-steady-state models
described in the Cooling Plant section. Like any other model, these models have limited
validity and will not, by their nature, properly reflect the dynamic behavior of an actual cool-
ing plant.
250 HVAC&R RESEARCH
Figure 5. Root mean square errors of prediction for

planning horizons L of zero to 24 hours
(The RMSE was computed on data from the third quarter of July,
which had been withheld from model training.)
• Since the performance curves for the ice storage systems are based on manufacturers’ and
otherwise published data, they cannot perfectly model all thermal energy storage systems of
this type, e.g. ice harvester, available in the market. Different ice storage types might exhibit
different penalties for overcharging, as in the case of ice-on-coil systems with external melt,
which in turn may affect the sensitivity to the forecasting performance.
• Design choices on storage and chiller capacities SCAP and CCAP as described in the Design
Parameters section have been made that may be different from design choices encountered in
actual applications.
• Utility rate structures under real-time pricing will vary significantly among utilities. Scenarios
of real-time pricing were chosen in which the cost of electricity is high during early afternoon
hours of high demand and low during night hours as well as hours of early morning while
varying smoothly (sinusoidally) between the low and peak values. Actual scenarios may dif-
fer significantly.
• The results generated are specific to the building and the weather data described in the Build-
ing Type section. Naturally, these results depend on the underlying models (basic or realistic
cooling plant). Other modeling approaches, ice storage types, and cooling plant configura-
tions, e.g. multiple chillers either in series or parallel, may lead to different results.
Perfect Plant Knowledge

The results of this section were generated based on the assumption that the basic plant model
is to be used for planning the optimal control actions and for simulation of the actual plant
behavior.
Perfect plant knowledge means that the cooling plant in reality behaves exactly as modeled by
the cooling plant model. Thus, the four variables (state-of-charge x, control variable u, tempera-
ture T, and cooling load Q) in conjunction with the cooling plant model of choice—either basic
or realistic—are sufficient to describe the behavior of the actual cooling plant. The validity of
this assumption, is dictated by the quality or fit of the model. Though perfect plant knowledge
will never be exactly achieved, the results presented in this section indicate the theoretical cost
savings potential of a predictive optimal controller when the only source of uncertainty lies in
the prediction of cooling loads.
Figures 6 and 7 illustrate the charging and discharging behavior as a result of either one of the
conventional controls or the optimal control for structure 2. For the example of perfect plant
knowledge these graphs describe to which extent the ice storage tank is utilized under the vari-
ous control strategies. Figure 6 shows that storage-priority did not fully deplete the ice storage
tank on Thursday because the autoregressive neural network model underestimated the cumula-
tive on-peak cooling load of Thursday’s on-peak period. Again, in all simulations, on-peak
period was from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Constant-proportion used the stor-
age to no more than 45%. The degree of use could have been increased by choosing a load frac-
tion in excess of the selected 25% (fQ = 0.25). For the three days depicted, chiller-priority with a
chiller downsized by 25% from the peak cooling load utilized the storage only slightly on Tues-
day and Wednesday, and not all on Thursday. Using a smaller chiller, or enforcing a load-limit
on the chiller would have increased the benefit of thermal energy storage under chiller-priority
control.
Figure 7 illustrates the effect of prediction performance on the control trajectory selected by
optimal control. The look-ahead (planning) horizon is L = 15 hours. It can be noted that all five
trajectories were roughly similar and exhibited the expected daily charging and discharging
cycles. During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, the unbiased random walk model
appeared to overestimate the night time cooling load and/or underestimate the loads during the
Thursday on-peak period since it decided not to fully recharge the ice storage tank. Furthermore,
perfect prediction leads to an optimal control trajectory that is always fully charged at the onset
of the on-peak period, and fully discharged at the end of it. The remaining models pursued similar
trajectories which, however, over the simulation period lead to smaller cost savings than for the
case of perfect load prediction. The remaining results are provided in summary form for brevity.
Figure 8 shows the results for rate structure 1 as illustrated in Figure 4. Rate structure 1 exhib-
ited the same switching behavior as current time-of-use energy utility rates. The line labeled
“full optimization (MIP)” refers to the result found when the optimization was carried out over
the entire time horizon (200 hours) and all variables were perfectly known. The optimization
technique to arrive at this result is known as mixed integer programming and has been described
in Henze et al. (1995). Only for presentation purposes was the MIP result shown as a function of
the planning horizon L, despite the fact that only one optimization was carried out over the entire
simulation period. Given perfect prediction in the closed-loop optimization, a planning horizon
of only L = 15 or L = 18 hours was sufficient to realize almost all of the cost savings as deter-
mined by the MIP solution. Using horizons L > 18 hours yielded no benefit. This shows that
even with perfect knowledge of the plant behavior and the external variables (weather and cool-
ing load), there exists an effect of quickly diminishing returns with increasing planning hori-
zons. The marginal discrepancy between the MIP solution and the closed-loop solution using
perfect prediction for L > 18 was due to discretization and the corresponding suboptimality
when using dynamic programming. For all of the runs, a discretization of 100 state and 100 con-
trol intervals was used.
When uncertainty in the prediction of the cooling loads was present, the different predictor
models showed varying levels of cost saving performance. The autoregressive neural network
252 HVAC&R RESEARCH
Figure 6. State-of-charge versus time under chiller-priority, constant-proportion,

and storage-priority control using an autoregressive neural network model for
cooling load prediction using rate structure 2 for Tuesday through Thursday
Figure 7. State-of-charge versus time under optimal control

(Plot based on various load prediction models using a look-ahead horizon of L = 15 hours and
rate structure 2 assuming perfect plant knowledge for Tuesday through Thursday.)
Figure 8. Operating cost savings as function of horizon L for various predictors

using rate structure 1 and perfect plant knowledge
model yielded savings that were very close to the perfect prediction case. It appears that the non-
linear nature of the AR model was well-suited for the prediction task at hand. However, as
shown in Figure 8, a simple nonlinear model such as the bin predictor model can effect savings
that are close to those achieved by using perfect predictions. The simple harmonic predictor
model appeared to be inadequate for the given prediction task and the achieved savings signifi-
cantly less than those of the aforementioned predictors. When the nature of cooling load devel-
opment was assumed to be an unbiased random walk, then predicting the current load value into
the future was the best choice. What is interesting to note is that even with such a poor predictor
(since the cooling load process is not a random walk), savings of up to 20% were achieved.
As shown in Table 1, while chiller-priority and constant-proportion yielded only small sav-
ings for rate structure 1, storage-priority control was near-optimal for perfect prediction. This
result corresponds to the findings of Braun (1992) who found storage-priority control to be
near-optimal when the cost function considers energy charges alone. For two of the
less-than-perfect predictors (random walk and harmonic models), storage-priority was even bet-
ter than optimal control. The reason for this is that these rather poor predictors provide poor
information during on-peak and off-peak periods for optimal control, while storage-priority con-
trol uses predicted values only during the relatively short on-peak periods (8 hours). Thus,
closed-loop optimization using poor prediction can do worse than a heuristic that is less depen-
dent on predicted data. For perfect predictions, optimal control has to be the best by definition;
for good predictions (AR network and bin models), storage-priority is still near-optimal. It is
important to note that these results were found for the switching rate structure 1 only.
Our results when rate structure 2 is applied are shown in Figure 9. This rate structure oscillates
sinusoidally between a peak energy rate of rmax = 0.12 $/kWh (0.033 $/MJ) and a minimal value
of zero. Though a minimal rate of rmin = 0.00 $/kWh (0.00 $/MJ) under real-time pricing may be
254 HVAC&R RESEARCH
Table 5. Cost saving performance of conventional control assuming

perfect plant knowledge. Included for comparison is predictive optimal control
using the autoregressive neural network predictor
Change in Cost (%) Using Rate Structure
Control Strategy 1 2 3
Chiller-Priority -4.1 +1.7 +3.1
Constant-Proportion -10.0 -0.4 +3.6
Storage-Priority Using:
Perfect Prediction -28.8 -19.3 -3.2
Bin Model -25.6 -17.4 -2.5
Unbiased Random Walk -27.3 -18.6 -2.9
Harmonic Model -26.6 -18.2 -2.8
AR Neural Network -27.3 -18.6 -2.9
Predictive Control -28.0 -38.8 -15.5

(AR Network, best look-ahead)
unrealistic, it was used nevertheless to assess control performance under these extreme cost con-
ditions. A few interesting features can be noted. First, due to the larger swing in the energy cost
and since the minimal energy charge drops to zero, in general, larger cost savings were observed
than for rate structure 1. Second, for all predictor models, the point of diminishing returns with
increasing horizon L was reached more quickly for this sinusoidally varying rate profile than for
the switching rate structure 1. Whereas before a horizon of L = 18 hours was required to reach an
asymptotic value of cost savings, now only L = 15 hours were required. For rate structure 1, it
took a horizon at least as long as the off-peak period for the optimal controller to recognize con-
sistently the change from high to low rates, i.e. to guarantee that information on the driving
energy cost incentives became available to the optimal controller. With sinusoidally varying rate
structures such as 2 and 3, only horizons greater than half of the period of the sine, i.e. L > 12
hours, were required to ensure this condition. In summary, shorter horizons L achieved higher rel-
ative cost saving performance when the rate structure was a smoothly varying periodic function.
The third noteworthy feature of Figure 9 is that as the horizon L increased, the performance dif-
ferences between the best predictor (perfect prediction) and the worst one (unbiased random
walk) decreased. In fact, the random walk model even exceeded the performance of the harmonic
model for horizons of L = 18 and L = 21 hours. Interestingly, for horizons L > 21 hours, the random
walk model became the worst again. Hence, there appears to be a best horizon when using the ran-
dom walk model. In the asymptotic region, the relative performance between perfect prediction,
the AR network model, and the bin model were similar to that of rate structure 1, the difference
being the improved relative performance of the harmonic and random walk models.
Finally, and in reference to Table 1, it can be seen that for rate structure 2 (i.e., a real-time
pricing scenario), chiller-priority control led to increased operating costs of 1.7%, constant-pro-
portion control achieved virtually no savings (0.4%), and storage-priority control realized only
about half the savings of optimal control. Thus, for complex rate structures, storage-priority con-
trol was not near-optimal. This can be explained by the fact that while storage-priority control
adequately accounts for conventional, i.e. switching, rate structures, the necessity for defined
on- and off-peak periods, despite the ambiguity as to whether a particular rate is high or low,
makes storage-priority control an inadequate heuristic. It is interesting to note that the quality of
load prediction only marginally affected the cost saving performance of storage-priority control.
Figure 10 shows the results found for rate structure 3 and perfect cooling plant model
knowledge. As for rate structure 2, the performance of optimal control for all predictor models

256 HVAC&R RESEARCH
is relatively similar with the exception of the random walk model. Since rate structure 3 has a
reduced amplitude of 0.08 $/kWh (0.022 $/MJ) instead of 0.12 $/kWh (0.033 $/MJ) and a
minimum rate of 0.04 $/kWh (0.011 $/MJ), significantly smaller savings are achieved com-
pared with rate structure 2. Using perfect prediction, at most 15% savings are achieved
whereas with rate structure 2 approximately 39% of peak savings were attained. As noticed
earlier for rate structure 2, a strong effect of diminishing returns leads to a horizon of L = 15 at
which the asymptotic cost savings are effected for all but the random walk predictor. Sur-
prisingly, the AR network model achieves slightly higher (0.2%-points) cost savings than per-
fect predictions. It is assumed that this artifact is due to the necessity for discretization in
dynamic programming which—due to time constraints—had to be limited to 100 control and
state intervals each. The random walk model again yields the highest savings for a horizon of
L = 21 hours, with decreasing savings thereafter. Interestingly, at a horizon of L = 21 hours,
optimal control effects cost savings within a margin of less than 2%-points regardless of the
prediction model used.
As shown by the results listed in Table 1, chiller-priority and constant-proportion control led
to higher operating costs when rate structure 3 is used. Furthermore, storage-priority control
achieved even less savings relative to optimal control (» 1/5) compared with rate structure 2
(» 1/2). This result indicates, as found by Henze (1996), that the performance benefit for opti-
mal control relative to storage-priority control increases as the load-shifting incentives are
weaker.
When (1) the cooling plant model mimics the actual cooling plant behavior perfectly, (2) the
real-time pricing rate structure is deterministically known for the next 24 hours, and (3) the rate
structure varies smoothly, and periodically, then the following were found (Figures 9 and 10):
• The cost savings of optimal control quickly (L = 15 hours) reached an asymptotic value,
which was only marginally affected by the quality of the cooling load prediction
• Even the poor assumption of an unbiased random walk as a load predictor led to substantial
operating cost savings.
• Optimal control was far superior to storage-priority control.
• Chiller-priority and constant-proportion control were inadequate control strategies.
In Figure 8 the results recorded show the change in operating cost with the same conditions as
(1) and (2), described in the paragraph above, but with (3) changed to a switching rate structure
(i.e., a time of use rate), such as rate structure 1. Under these conditions, the following were noted:
• The cost savings reached an asymptotic value somewhat later than for the sinusoidal rates
(after about L = 18 hours),
• This is also more strongly dependent on the load predictor performance, so that good predic-
tor design did pay off.
• Even the random walk predictor yielded significant savings.
• Storage-priority was near-optimal for perfect and good predictions, but could be even better
than our certainty-equivalence, closed-loop control for poor predictors such as the random
walk and harmonic models, since it made less use of inaccurate predictions.
• Chiller-priority and constant-proportion control achieved only small savings because
load-shifting was encouraged on the basis of energy rates only (no demand charge).
In summary, the results for optimal control indicated that, with perfect plant knowledge, plan-
ning horizons of L ³ 15 hours, and load prediction performance that was better than predictions
into the future for the current load value (not a hard goal to meet), roughly similar operating cost
savings could be achieved, regardless of the predictor model (AR network, harmonic, bin model,
and perfect prediction). The utility rate structure appeared to be the predominant driving factor
in the optimization task. It may be surmised, therefore, that so long as the energy rates are deter-
ministically known over the prediction horizon L, savings will be achieved.
Imperfect Plant Knowledge

If the cooling plant model used in the closed-loop optimization, i.e. for planning optimal strat-
egies, differs from the behavior of the actual cooling plant, the plant knowledge is said to be
imperfect. There are two sources of uncertainty, (1) in the prediction of those variables required
for the optimization and (2) in the computation of the cooling plant power consumption P given
the predicted variables. To simulate this case, the basic plant model was used for planning in the
dynamic programming algorithm and the realistic plant model was used in the simulation stage
to determine the power consumption that had actually been incurred. In the case of perfect plant
knowledge described in Section 6.2, the basic plant model was assumed to mirror the actual
plant behavior. Therefore, the changes of operating cost for a particular rate structure, e.g. Fig-
ure 8 and Figure 12, for the cases of perfect and imperfect plant knowledge cannot be compared
as they are based on different simulation cooling plant models.

The basic and realistic plant models predicted substantially different values of plant energy
use for the same values of the charge/discharge control variable u, cooling load Q, and ambient
dry-bulb temperature Tdb. The difference between the models was quantified as the average
absolute difference of energy use computed by the basic and realistic plant models. The average
was estimated over a one month simulation period; at each hour in the month, the difference in
energy use computed by the basic and realistic models was recorded. The average energy use
predicted by the realistic plant model was 430 kW, while the average absolute difference was
100 kW. At almost every hour in the month, the basic plant model predicted less energy use than
the realistic model. It appears, then, that the basic plant model is not an accurate approximation
of the realistic plant model.
The results for all three rate structures investigated in this study, as shown in Figures 12, 13,
and 14, exhibit one prevailing feature: the cost savings performance of optimal control as a func-
tion of the planning horizon L and the prediction quality is very similar to the behavior found for
perfect plant knowledge, as depicted by Figures 8, 9, and 10. In particular, using rate structure 1,
the same features of diminishing returns for perfect prediction, the autoregressive neural net-
work, and the bin predictor models for L > 18 are depicted in Figure 12 as was shown in Figure
8. Furthermore, the unbiased random walk model yielded the smallest savings, and the harmonic
model the second smallest, however only for L < 18 hours. Again, for L > 18 hours, all predic-
tors but the random walk model effected similar savings. Though the savings figures for the
cases of perfect and imperfect plant knowledge are not comparable since different simulation
models were used, the overall behavior appeared similar. This supports the conclusion made for
the case of perfect plant knowledge that the utility rate structure is the driving parameter.
However, there is one significant difference. Perfect prediction no longer necessarily yields
the highest cost savings in the presence of model uncertainty. In fact, for L > 12 hours, both the
bin predictor and the neural network models fared better than perfect prediction. This apparent
paradox may be explained by the following argument. Regardless of the predictor model, the
planning phase devises an optimal strategy that may not be executable with the simulation plant
model, i.e. the one that is taken to mirror the actual plant behavior.
Both plant models were subject to different control constraints umin and umax. In particular,
the constraints of the realistic plant model were more restrictive than those of the basic plant
model. Investigating the control trajectories for the various predictors, it can be seen that most of
the time the controls considered optimal by the planning model (basic) were outside the permis-
sible range of the realistic plant model, as shown in Figure 11. In those cases, the recommended
control was curtailed to the corresponding control limit of the actual plant. For example, if the
258 HVAC&R RESEARCH
planning model determined u = 100 to be the optimal charging rate, but due to heat transfer lim-
itations and chiller capacity only u = 70 could be realized in the actual cooling plant (realistic
model), consequently only u = 70 were executed. Since the optimal strategies determined by the
planning plant model exhibited a strong switching behavior, i.e. the controls are either at the
upper or lower limit, and since these controls were either too high or too low for the actual plant,
the corresponding upper or lower control limit of the actual plant became the new, overridden
control action. Hence, if the constraints of the planning model and the actual cooling plant dif-
fered strongly, perfect knowledge of future variables (in this case cooling loads) used within the
context of an imperfect model for planning did not necessarily lead to the best performance.
Essentially, imperfect load information used by an imperfect planning model may serendipi-
tously outperform perfect load information used by an imperfect planning model when evalu-
ated in the simulation stage. (Note: This argument is valid for the case of the mismatch between
the planning and simulation models and the specific conditions considered in this study.)
Figure 11 shows how the optimal control action at each point in time, regardless of the cool-
ing load prediction performance (perfect, predicting the mean value, and uniform random pre-
diction) used in the planning stage, tended be at or beyond the control limits umin and umax of the
realistic simulation model. From this observation a heuristic could be derived that recommends
discharging the storage at the maximal rate during periods when the utility rates are highest, and
charging at the maximum rate when the utility rates are lowest. Therefore, the control becomes
virtually independent of the forecast algorithm under particular rate structures and cooling load
profiles. However, future work is needed to validate this heuristic.
Referring to the results summarized in Table 2, storage-priority control was again near-opti-
mal for the switching rate structure 1. But storage-priority control was found to be even slightly
better than optimal (for perfect prediction and the harmonic model). The reason for this particu-
lar result for rate structure 1 can be found in the fact that optimal control relies on both imperfect
plant knowledge and imperfect predictions while storage-priority relies only on imperfect load
Figure 11. Effect of imperfect plant knowledge on optimal control

using rate structure 1 and imperfect plant knowledge
260 HVAC&R RESEARCH
predictions available at the beginning of the on-peak period. Storage-priority predicts the cumu-
lative on-peak cooling load and determines the corresponding control parameters A0 and A1
thereafter. Because the on-peak period for the investigated case was only eight hours long, the
impact of the uncertainty on the cooling load prediction was relatively small for both the basic
and the realistic plant models. Again, it can be observed that the quality of load prediction only
marginally affected the cost saving performance of storage-priority control.
In summary, with traditional time-of-use rate structures (rate structure 1) and model uncer-
tainty, storage-priority control outperformed optimal control while being the simpler strategy.
Since the prediction was only carried out over the relatively short on-peak period, the effect of
load prediction uncertainty was marginal. As shown in Table 2, storage-priority control retained
its performance benefit over constant-proportion and chiller-priority control.
Figure 13 illustrates the cost savings performance in the presence of plant model uncertainty
under rate structure 2. As shown in Figure 9, the performance of all predictors were found
within a narrow envelope. The perfect prediction yielded the highest savings, followed by the
autoregressive neural network. For horizons L ³ 9 hours, the performance for the bin predictor,
the harmonic predictor and the unbiased random walk was very similar, and by about 3%-points
worse than that of the aforementioned prediction models. Identical to the case of perfect plant
knowledge, storage-priority control fell behind optimal control, i.e. 18.4% savings for stor-
age-priority control versus about 31% for optimal control using perfect prediction.
The same conclusion holds for rate structure 3 as depicted in Figure 14. With the cost of elec-
trical energy varying sinusoidally between 0.04 $/kWh (0.011 $/MJ) and 0.12 $/kWh (0.033
$/MJ), optimal control still led to about 10% savings while storage-priority control achieved
only about 3%. In other words, storage-priority control achieves at most » 60% of optimal con-
trol (at best horizon of L = 24 hours) for rate structure 2, and for rate structure 3, at most » 20%
of optimal control. For rate structure 3, perfect prediction was found to yield lower savings than
for less-than-perfect predictions (as before for rate structure 1).
Table 2 shows that, in a few instances, less-than-perfect load prediction leads to savings
slightly higher than those obtained for perfect prediction. The explanation for this oddity can be
found in the highly nonlinear behavior of the realistic plant model. Upon further investigation, it
was found that these faulty predictions led to an empty storage before the end of the on-peak
period. For the realistic plant model used in the investigation in conjunction with the present
cooling load and weather data, discharging more quickly and being empty for one or two hours
at the end of the on-peak period led to higher operating cost savings than the ideal storage-prior-
ity policy, i.e. to be exactly empty at end of the on-peak period.
Table 6. Cost saving performance of conventional control assuming

imperfect plant knowledge. For comparison, predictive optimal control
using the autoregressive neural network predictor is included
Change in Cost (%) Using Rate Structure
Control Strategy 1 2 3
Chiller-Priority -3.8 +0.3 +2.4

Constant-Proportion -9.2 -2.4 +2.8
Storage-Priority Using:
Perfect Prediction -23.5 -18.4 -1.5
Bin Model -22.7 -17.5 -1.9
Unbiased Random Walk -22.8 -17.7 -1.3
Harmonic Model -23.6 -18.3 -2.1
AR Neural Network -23.0 -17.9 -1.3
Predictive Control -23.4 -30.0 -10.5
(AR Network, best look-ahead)
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE OPTIMAL CONTROLLER

The implementation of the optimal controller described in this report, while not trivial, is fea-
sible. The following items are needed for an implementation of the near-optimal controller.
• Real-time pricing: Energy cost always known for the next 24 hours.
• Cooling load and dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperature, available in real time.
• Sufficient computer memory to store one large cost-to-go table for the dynamic programming
algorithm.
• A processor that can carry out the dynamic programming algorithm in less time than the inter-
val between control decisions (perhaps 30 minutes).
• Processor time is also needed to make the cooling load predictions which are used in the
dynamic programming algorithm.
Assuming that temperature and load data are available in real time, computing power appears
to be the limiting factor. The memory needed for dynamic programming is proportional to the
product of the number of intervals in the state and control variables and length of the planning
horizon. Using a L = 18 hour planning horizon, and 50 intervals in both the state and control
variables, a memory allocation of 7800 bytes using double-precision arithmetic is required.
Reducing the discretization to 20 intervals each, only 3200 bytes will be needed. Additional
memory will be required for the executable program. The size of the dynamic programming
code, as compiled, is about 15 kilobytes. A complete program based on this code may be from
25 to 50 kilobytes. Thus, the total memory required for both data and program is something less
than 60 kilobytes. Finally, a small operating system is needed to execute the program and handle
262 HVAC&R RESEARCH
various functions, bringing the total memory required for an implementation to perhaps 100
kilobytes.
The number of flops (floating point operations) to compute the dynamic programming solu-
tion for a planning horizon of L time-steps with M control values and N state values is approxi-
mately LMN2 + 20LMN, as determined by counting floating point operations in the innermost
loop of the dynamic programming code. If L = 18, M = 50, and N = 50 as described above, the
total flops needed for each planning interval are approximately 3.2 million flops. Additional
operations are needed outside the innermost loop, but as the innermost loop dominates the
dynamic programming algorithm, this gives us a rough estimate of the total processing needed.
A 16-MHz 80386 processor without floating point hardware (a slow processor by current stan-
dards) can execute about 50,000 flops per second. Thus, to execute the dynamic programming
algorithm would require about one minute of processor time. This is much less than the typical
30 to 60 minute planning and control interval.
Making predictions requires few flops and little memory at run time, but assumes that a large
historical data base is available for model building. For example, the autoregressive network
which made the predictions used in this study required about 1600 bytes to store the weights and
biases, and about 400 flops to make each prediction. Thus, the memory and flops required by the
dynamic programming algorithm far outweigh the requirements of the predictor. It appears,
then, that a slow computer with limited memory could implement the certainty-equivalence,
closed-loop controller presently described.
Apart from these hardware requirements, uncertainty in the cooling plant model used for
planning the optimal control strategy can be reduced by means of on-line parameter adjustment.
Based on real-time measurements of chilled water leaving and return temperatures, chilled water
flow rate as well as electrical power consumption of the chiller, cooling tower, and associated
pumps, the efficiency or the electric input ratio EIR, respectively, of the cooling plant can be
determined. These values are divided into two groups, one for the icemaking mode in the case of
subfreezing chilled water leaving temperatures and one for the chilled-water mode. Over a
selected time window into the past, these measured values are then used to determine the
EIR(ice) and EIR(chw) to be used in the basic plant model for planning. For example, a moving
average or finite response filter may be applied to the measured values. The time window should
be large enough to effectively average out diurnal swings in ambient conditions but short
enough to capture seasonal variations in cooling plant performance.
SUMMARY
The present study explored the potential of optimal control for thermal energy storage sys-
tems. The particular case of an ice storage system was investigated. Various predictor models
were analyzed with respect to their performance in forecasting cooling load data and informa-
tion on ambient conditions (dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures). The models used included
perfect prediction, a bin model, a random walk model, a harmonic model, and an autoregressive
neural network model. The results showed that the complex network model and the simple bin
model came very close to the cost savings of the perfect prediction case. The harmonic model
proved inadequate for the prediction task at hand. Interestingly, even the relatively inaccurate
random walk predictor yielded considerable savings.
The optimal strategy was based on closed-loop optimization, i.e. an optimal storage charging
and discharging strategy was developed at every time step, over a marching planning horizon
utilizing updated forecasts. Of this strategy, the first action was executed over the next time step
and the process was repeated at every following time step. The effect of the planning horizon
was investigated and it was found that short horizons on the order of one day are only margin-
ally suboptimal relative to a strategy that is optimal over the entire simulation horizon.
Three utility rate structures were analyzed: A conventional switching time-of-use rate struc-
ture, i.e. between a constant high and a constant low value, and two sinusoidally varying rate
structures with different amplitudes and mean values. In addition to prediction, imperfect model
knowledge as an additional source of uncertainty was investigated.
The predictive optimal controller was then compared to three conventional control heuristics.
For the switching rate structure, storage-priority proved to be near-optimal for long planning hori-
zons and superior to optimal control for short planning horizons. However, it was found that in the
presence of complex rate structures, i.e. real-time pricing rates that change on an hourly basis, the
proposed optimal controller had a significant performance benefit over the conventional controls
while requiring only simple predictors. In fact, these general findings did not change when there
was considerable uncertainty with respect to the behavior of the actual cooling plant (imperfect
plant knowledge). These results indicated that knowledge of the price structure is essential.
Based on these findings, further development and implementation of a predictive optimal
controller for thermal storage systems in a laboratory or field setting appears feasible and prom-
ising. The deregulation of utilities will bring real-time pricing, and thermal storage systems will
have to deal with these altered load-shifting incentives. The proposed controller will more ade-
quately account for these complex rate structures than the available control heuristics—such as
chiller-priority control—and the higher sensitivity of optimal control with respect to prediction
and model quality will be more than compensated for.
NOMENCLATURE
A0 capacity for storage-priority control, kW L look-ahead horizon, hours
A1 load fraction from storage for storage-priority l instantaneous cost function used in DP
control algorithm, $
Am,k,Bm,k constants for the harmonic model of M number of discretization intervals for the
the dry-bulb temperature, °C control variable u
a 1, a 2 ,… ,a n lower limit values of the input variables N number of discretization intervals for the
for the bin predictor model state variable x
b 1, b 2 ,… ,b n upper limit values of the input variables P(.) mapping function for the power consump-
for the bin predictor model tion of cooling plant, kW
CCAP nominal chiller capacity, kW Pk total power consumption of cooling plant in
EIR(chw) electric input ratio of the chiller in hour k ® k + 1, kW
chilled-water mode [kW/ton] Qch chiller load, kW
EIR(ice) electric input ratio of the chiller in Qch,k chiller load in hour k ® k + 1, kW
ice-making mode [kW/ton] Qice icemaking cooling [tons] ([kW])
E
expected value operator Qk cooling load in hour k ® k + 1, kW
E˜ expected value operator, approximated by Ql air handler cooling load, kW
Monte-Carlo method Qpeak peak cooling load in simulation, kW
F neural network output function Qt cooling load at time t, kW
f state transition function for dynamic Q m ,h ,τ average cooling load given month m, hour h,
programming and temperature index t, kW
fQ load fraction from storage for constant- R number of realizations for the Monte Carlo
proportion control method
I optimal cost-to-go used in DP algorithm, $ rk energy charge in hour k, $/kWh ($/MJ)
I˜ ( x ,k ) optimal cost-to-go function for modified rmin minimal real-time pricing electrical cost,
total cost, $ $/kWh ($/MJ)
J cost function used in optimal control strategy, $ rmax maximal real-time pricing electrical cost,
J˜ total cost function modified by assuming $/kWh ($/MJ)
certainty-equivalence, $ SCAP storage capacity, MJ
K total number of time intervals in simulation, t0 time at the start of the planning horizon, h
hours T ambient temperature, °C
k time index Tdb dry-bulb temperature, °C
264 HVAC&R RESEARCH
Tdb,k dry-bulb temperature in hour k ® k + 1, °C x ,x′ state-of-charge of the ice storage tank
Tk ambient temperature in hour k ® k + 1, °C xk state-of-charge of the ice storage tank in
Twb wet-bulb temperature, °C hour k ® k + 1
Twb,k wet-bulb temperature in hour k ® k + 1, °C xmin lower limit on state-of-charge
T m ,h average dry-bulb temperature given month xmax upper limit on state-of-charge
m and hour h, °C y output variable from the neural network model
U constrained set of admissible control values
Dt time interval used in simulation, h
u rate of charge or discharge, kW
t temperature bin index
uk rate of charge or discharge in hour
k ® k + 1, kW gm average monthly dry-bulb temperature, °C
umin maximal storage discharging rate, kW h deviation from mean value of the uncon-
umax maximal storage charging rate, kW trolled disturbance w
umin,TES(x) maximal heat transfer discharging limit, s noise magnitude variable
kW sQ noise magnitude for cooling load
umax,TES(x) maximal heat transfer charging limit, kW sT noise magnitude for ambient temperature
wk uncontrolled disturbance at time k wk frequency components of the harmonic
wk expected value of disturbance model, rd/h (rd/s)

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Development of a Predictive Optimal Controller for

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10789669.1997.10391376

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VOL. 3, NO. 3 HVAC&R RESEARCH JULY 1997

Development of a Predictive Optimal Controller

Scope of Present Work

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Figure 1. Cooling load profile of large 20-floor office building

Figure 2. Wet-bulb temperature profile for 20-floor office building investigated

Thermal Storage System

described in discrete time by

x min ≤ x k ≤ x max (2)

u min ,k ≤ u k ≤ u max ,k (3)

SCAP = 4Q peak ∆t (4)

CCAP = Q peak (5)

 Q ch ,k EIR ( ice ) if u > 0 , i.e. charging

u min = max { – Q k, u x = x min } (8)

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Figure 3. Diagram of cooling plant configuration

u min = max { – Q k, u x = x min, u min ,TES ( x ) } (10)

CONVENTIONAL CONTROL STRATEGIES

of current quantities such as cooling load and control limits.

Constant-proportion control is rather easy to implement by assigning a fixed fraction of the

( 1 – f Q )Q max ≤ CCAP nom

where CCAP nom is the nominal chiller capacity.

The chiller capacity A0 is computed from

Figure 4. Rate structures used in this study

Summarizing Equations (23), (24), and (25),

Application of the Certainty Equivalence Principle

where Tk is either dry-bulb or wet-bulb temperature, depending on the condenser type

The left-hand side was estimated by Monte-Carlo integration,

where w̃ i is a simulated disturbance,

PREDICTION OF FUTURE DISTURBANCES

Unbiased Random Walk Model

Bin Predictor Model

Harmonic Predictor Model

∑ ( Am, k sin ( ωk t ) ) + ( Bm, k cos ( ωk t ) )

Autoregressive Network Predictor Model

sin ( 2πk ⁄ 365 ), cos ( 2πk ⁄ 365 ) (42)

Comparison of Prediction Models

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Figure 5. Root mean square errors of prediction for

Perfect Plant Knowledge

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Figure 6. State-of-charge versus time under chiller-priority, constant-proportion,

Figure 7. State-of-charge versus time under optimal control

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Figure 8. Operating cost savings as function of horizon L for various predictors

Table 5. Cost saving performance of conventional control assuming

Predictive Control -28.0 -38.8 -15.5

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Figure 9. Operating cost savings as function of horizon L for various predictors

Imperfect Plant Knowledge

as they are based on different simulation cooling plant models.

Figure 11. Effect of imperfect plant knowledge on optimal control

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Table 6. Cost saving performance of conventional control assuming

Chiller-Priority -3.8 +0.3 +2.4

IMPLEMENTATION OF THE OPTIMAL CONTROLLER

wk expected value of disturbance model, rd/h (rd/s)