Distributed MPC for Multi-zone Temperature Regulation with Coupled Constraints

International audienceOptimizing the operation of heating systems in buildings has become of high interest. The control objective of such systems is to minimize the heating energy bills while maintaining a certain indoor thermal comfort. Dealing with electric convectors, the heating price is proportional to the amount of heat delivered. Hence, using a linear model of the process in an MPC environment, the optimization problem can be stated in an LP form. In this paper we treat the case of multi-zone building temperature regulation, where the available electrical power is lower than the sum of the maximum powers of local heaters. This acts as a coupling constraint in our optimization problem. A distributed MPC (DMPC) algorithm based on Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition is proposed, considering also the thermal coupling between adjacent zones. Numerical results are presented in order to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy