Improving Comfort and Air Conditioner Performance by Optimizing Controllers under Actual Usage Conditions

• Main Authors: Taebyoung Park, Byungsoon Kim, Gilun Hwang, Yulho Kang, Inwon Lee, Youngchull Ahn
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-05-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: control method; optimizing controller; air conditioner; energy efficiency
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/11/4818

This study is to increase the efficiency of the air conditioning system under actual conditions of use. In order to improve the increase in energy consumption due to control without considering indoor cooling load fluctuations, we review it compared to conventional control methods in two respects. First, we examined the control method to reduce energy consumption by varying the evaporative pressure of the system according to the cooling load, and secondly, further reducing energy consumption by controlling the revolutions per minute (RPM) of the fan of the indoor unit at the same time as the pressure fluctuation under the cooling load. We found that changing the target pressure depending on the difference between the target temperature and room temperature can control temperature more efficiently and save energy than using fixed target pressure, and that the effect increases when applying the control of the air volume of the indoor air. Cleaning up the resulting values, the fan-load-control condition of the cooling-load-estimation control method showed an energy savings effect of 16.1–48.7% compared with the fixed-pressure control method and 1.2–37.7% compared with the cooling-load-estimation control method.