Grey prediction on indoor comfort temperature for HVAC systems

This paper describes determination of indoor comfort temperature for efficiently Heating, Ventilating, and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) system under dynamical environment. Making occupants' satisfaction on thermal comfort is still challenging by how the temperature setpoint of the fresh made-up air in conventional HVAC systems can be adapted properly (normally fixed) when surroundings changes in time. Essentially, being unknown ahead of time, the outdoor temperature is systematically predicted by grey prediction model in this work. The Adaptive Comfort Theory (ACT) model captures relation of the indoor comfort temperature to the outdoor temperature based on the survey data on thermal comfort in real occupants' living environment. With the grey prediction model and the ACT model, the predicted indoor comfort temperature can be implemented as the comfort temperature reference for HVAC control systems. The experiment results show the viability of the proposed methodology for efficient HVAC control system. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.