Investigation of energy saving in HVAC systems: Modeling, simulation, and measurement using fuzzy logic controller

Achieving thermal comfort with minimum energy consumption is the main requirement in designing the air conditioning system. The aim of this work is to investigate energy saving in two different types of air conditioning systems installed in two identical houses located at a university campus in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The conventional A/C system is equipped with an ON/OFF cycle and new the technology A/C system is equipped with variable frequency drive (VFD) both of which have been modeled by two different control strategies. The controllers are Fuzzy Logic Controllers (FLC) and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID). The thermal model for both houses has been developed with two different types of air-conditioning systems. LabVIEW platform is utilized for measuring the environment parameters and power consumption. It is found that the thermal comfort level of the house along with significant energy saving can be obtained through a proper selection of controller parameters. This paper shows that through utilizing a variable speed compressor and selecting the suitable control technique, the indoor environment of the house is able to be controlled with a great amount of energy saving.