Semi-decentralized temperature control in district heating systems

The supply temperature in district heating systems has traditionally been controlled using feedforward – a robust and well-validated approach for district heating networks with few producers and relatively high supply temperatures. The transition towards lower temperature district heating networks allows for efficient reuse of excess heat from, e.g., industrial processes and data centers. Excess heat is often intermittent, cannot always be assumed to be possible to control with a centralized controller, and can cause temperature disturbances in the grid. Closing the loop using PID control is challenging due to the process’s time-varying nature and long time delays. Model Predictive Control (MPC) suffers from a higher complexity, long computational times, and the need for a well-validated and maintained centralized model. The paper suggests a semi-decentralized approach using the Smith predictor with an event-driven assignment of active controllers and sensors. A reduced order model based on a more comprehensive state space model is derived and used for gain scheduling and input–output pairing using the normalized relative gain array. The focus is on temperature disturbance rejection, and appropriate tuning rules and controller structures are suggested. Simulation results show that the proposed control structure can handle various types of temperature disturbances, even in the presence of model estimation errors.