PID and Model Predictive Control (MPC) Strategies Design for a Virtual Distributed Solar Collector Field

Abstract

Distributed solar collector fields are an interesting case in the area of control since apart from presenting several disturbances, their main source of energy is solar irradiation that cannot be manipulated, depends on daily and seasonal variations causing the solar resource is not always available. This makes it necessary to research control techniques that can optimize the use of the existing solar resource. Therefore, in this research, a model predictive control strategy MPC is designed for a virtual distributed solar collector field where the control objective is to maintain the output temperature of a fluid at the desired value. In addition, a PID control strategy with a Feedforward block is also implemented that it's used to compare the results obtained with the MPC to determine which controller has better performance, which one allows a longer operation time, optimizing the use of the available solar irradiation and which one responds better to disturbances. All this is through an immersive virtual environment where the user can interact with all the instrumentation of the virtual distributed solar collector field and can visualize the evolution of the variables and modify the state of the virtual plant by manipulating the disturbances as well as the parameters of the PID and MPC controllers designed. Finally, the results show a better performance of the plant when implementing the MPC control strategy and the advantages of implementing a virtual environment interactive with the user.