Development of an Enhanced Self-Tuning RBF-PID Controller for Achieving Higher Energy-Efficient Process Control

Proportional, integral and derivative (PID) control strategy has been widely applied in heating systems in decades. To improve the accuracy and the ro-bustness of PID control, self-tuning radial-basis-function neural network PID (RBF-PID) is developed and used. Even though being popular, during the control process both of PID and RBF-PID control strategy are inadequate in achieving simultaneous high energy-efficiency and good control accuracy. To address this problem, in this paper we develop and report an enhanced self-tuning radial-basis-function neural network PID (e-RBF-PID) controller. To identify the superiority of e-RBF-PID, following works are conducted and reported in this paper. Firstly, four controllers, i.e., on-off, PID, RBF-PID and e-RBF-PID are designed. Secondly, in order to test the performance of the e-RBF-PID controller, an experimental water heating system is constructed for being controlled. Finally, the energy consumption for the four controllers under the three sumption can be saved. Therefore, it is concluded that the proposed e-RBF-PID is capable of enhancing energy efficiency during control process.