ADAPTIVE CONTROL OF A SOLAR ENERGY PLANT: EXPLOITING ACCESSIBLE DISTURBANCES

✍ Scribed by F. COITO; J. M. LEMOS; R. N. SILVA; E. MOSCA

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 797 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0890-6327
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1115(199706)11:4<327::aid-acs411>3.0.co;2-z

✦ Synopsis

This paper deals with temperature control in an industrial-scale distributed collector solar field. The need for adaptive control arises from the highly time-varying behaviour of both the plant dynamics and the solar radiation effects in the collector field due to atmospheric changes. The control problem consists of keeping constant the field outlet oil temperature by acting on the oil flow. The manipulated variable is chosen so as to minimize a receding horizon quadratic cost. The underlying control law is of model-based predictive control type, adaptively implemented by a MUSMAR algorithm, modified so as to exploit the information conveyed by the accessible disturbances. Experimental results are reported showing the significance on the achievable performance of the feedforward term depending on the accessible disturbances.