Control performance assessment for building automation systems

Abstract This paper focuses on the application area of building automation systems and highlights the need for methods to assess the performance of SISO feedback loops. Several practical issues make it difficult to apply some of the more widely known performance assessment methods to systems in buildings. These issues are discussed and an alternative method is described that is designed to be more practicable for the buildings application area. The method involves extracting features from the setpoint error signal and it yields a normalized index that can be used to detect and diagnose tuning problems as well as valve stiction. The paper describes the method and demonstrates its utility on several building control loops.

[1]  T. Edgar,et al.  Assessment of achievable PI control performance for linear processes with dead time , 1998, Proceedings of the 1998 American Control Conference. ACC (IEEE Cat. No.98CH36207).

[2]  J. Macgregor,et al.  Monitoring and Diagnosing Process Control Performance: The Single-Loop Case , 1991, 1991 American Control Conference.

[3]  Ed. McKenzie.  10. Time Series Analysis by Higher Order Crossings , 1996 .

[4]  Tore Hägglund,et al.  Automatic detection of sluggish control loops , 1999 .

[5]  Biao Huang,et al.  Performance Assessment of Control Loops , 1999 .

[6]  Ashish Singhal,et al.  A simple method for detecting valve stiction in oscillating control loops , 2005 .

[7]  Christos Georgakis,et al.  Controller performance assessment based on minimum and open-loop output variance , 2000 .

[8]  Timothy I. Salsbury,et al.  A SURVEY OF CONTROL TECHNOLOGIES IN THE BUILDING AUTOMATION INDUSTRY , 2005 .

[9]  Robert Kohl.  Commissioning HVAC Controls Systems , 2001 .

[10]  Stephen J. Wright,et al.  A Framework for Integrating Model Predictive Controllers to Control Large-Scale Systems , 2005 .

[11]  S. Joe Qin,et al.  Control performance monitoring — a review and assessment , 1998 .

[12]  Volodymyr Vasyutynskyy,et al.  PASSIVE MONITORING OF CONTROL LOOPS IN BUILDING AUTOMATION , 2005 .

[13]  J. Macgregor,et al.  The exponentially weighted moving variance , 1993 .

[14]  Tore Hägglund,et al.  A Control-Loop Performance Monitor , 1995 .

[15]  Timothy I. Salsbury,et al.  A practical method for assessing the performance of control loops subject to random load changes , 2005 .

[16]  James E. Braun,et al.  Reducing energy costs and peak electrical demand through optimal control of building thermal storage , 1990 .

[17]  Torsten Söderström,et al.  Identification of continuous-time AR processes from unevenly sampled data , 2002, Autom..

[18]  Yun Li,et al.  Patents, software, and hardware for PID control: an overview and analysis of the current art , 2006, IEEE Control Systems.

[19]  Nina F. Thornhill,et al.  Refinery-wide control loop performance assessment , 1999 .

[20]  A. Isaksson,et al.  A modified index for control performance assessment , 1998, Proceedings of the 1998 American Control Conference. ACC (IEEE Cat. No.98CH36207).