• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.130-142
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• 2018

We use heat pumps with thermal storage system to reduce peak usage of electric power during winters and summers. A heat pump stores thermal energy in a thermal storage tank during the night, to meet load requirements during the day. This system stabilizes the supply and demand of electric power; moreover by utilizing the inexpensive midnight electric power, thus making it cost effective. In this study, we propose a system wherein the thermal storage tank and heat pump are modeled using the TRNSYS, whereas the control simulations are performed by (i) conventional control methods (i.e., thermal storage priority method and heat pump priority method); (ii) region control method, which operates at the optimal part load ratio of the heat pump; (iii) load response control method, which minimizes operating cost responding to load; and (iv) dynamic programming method, which runs the system by following the minimum cost path. We observed that the electricity cost using the region control method, load response control approach, and dynamic programing method was lower compared to using conventional control techniques. According to the annual simulation results, the electricity cost utilizing the load response control method is 43% and 4.4% lower than those obtained by the conventional techniques. We can note that the result related to the power cost was similar to that obtained by the dynamic programming method based on the load prediction. We can, therefore, conclude that the load response control method turned out to be more advantageous when compared to the conventional techniques regarding power consumption and electricity costs.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.29 no.11
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• pp.592-604
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• 2017

A chiller, having a thermal storage system, can contribute to load-leveling and can reduce the cost of electricity by using electricity at night. In this study, the control experiments and simulations are conducted using both conventional and advanced methods for the building cooling system. Advanced approaches, such as the "region control method", divide the control region into five zones according to the size of the building load, and determines the cooling capacities of the chiller and thermal storage. On the other hand, the "dynamic programming method" obtains the optimal cooling capacities of the chiller and thermal storage by selecting the minimum-cost path by carrying out repetitive calculations. The "thermal storage priority method" shows an inferior chiller performance owing to the low-part load operation, whereas the chiller priority method leads to a high electric cost owing to the low utilization of thermal storage and electricity at night. It has been proven that the advanced control methods have advantages over the conventional methods in terms of electricity consumption, as well as cost-effectiveness. According to the simulation results during the winter season, the electric cost when using the dynamic programming method was 6.5% and 8.9% lower than that of the chiller priority and the thermal storage priority methods, respectively. It is therefore concluded that the cost of electricity utilizing the region control method is comparable to that of the dynamic programming method.