Hybrid NMPC of supermarket display cases

Abstract This paper presents an NMPC of a supermarket refrigeration system. This is a hybrid process involving switched nonlinear dynamics and discrete events, on/off manipulated variables (valves and compressors), continuous controlled variables (goods temperatures) and, finally, several operation constraints. The hybrid controller is based on a parameterization of the on/off control signals in terms of time of occurrence of events instead of using directly binary values; in this way, the optimization problem can be re-formulated as an NLP problem. A rigorous model of a real supermarket refrigeration system is presented, as well as results of the hybrid controller operating on it.