Study and Comparison of Control and Regulation Systems for Solar Thermal Plants

Solar thermal systems are mainly used for the application of small size in the residential market, with the purpose of producing domestic hot water and, in applications that allow, covering part of heating requirements. This technology is increasingly used in other fields of application through the adoption of largest size systems that are more complicated than residential systems and require a detailed and careful design. Among the different phases of design, there is the study of the best system of management and control; this research aims to develop a help for designers during this choice. The first step of this work has been a commercial search in order to determine the current modes of control of solar thermal systems. After, were made some dynamic simulations using some of the control mode previously defined. The simulations were done with Matlab-Simulink simulation software using a stable and calibrated dynamic model. Simulink is a graphical interface that uses different types of elements (blocks) that allow creating models to simulate a dynamic system; that is, a system that can be represented by a model of differential equations or difference where the independent variable is time. Finally, the control modes were tested in a building energy retrofit. © 2016 The Authors.