Minimum Energy Cognitive Lighting Control: Stability Analysis and Experiments

Energy is one of the most important foundations of the world. However, the demand for lighting consumes a significant amount of electricity. In order to save lighting electricity and reduce cost, one obvious way is to supplement artificial light with natural light. The mixing of artificial and natural lighting, known as hybrid lighting, can be used to indoors for all lighting needs. In order to maintain the overall illumination level at the rated value, the amount of artificial light needs to change according to the varying natural light. To meet the desired energy saving potential, a suitable means for minimizing energy usage throughout the day must be developed. Minimum energy point tracking (MEPT) algorithms can be utilized to tackle this minimization problem. In this paper, a minimum energy cognitive lighting control prototype is proposed, designed and developed. A simple PID control law is implemented to maintain an arbitrary level of illumination while a sliding mode based extremum seeking controller (SM-ESC) is employed to minimize energy usage in the lights. Furthermore, this paper presents the experiment results of our MEPT research and tracking control for light level. The experimental results can show the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed minimum cognitive energy lighting control scheme.© 2013 ASME