Heating system control based on required heating power

Abstract

A control system and method for controlling an indoor heating system for an indoor environment in accordance with a desired indoor temperature, comprising a sensor (18) for detecting an outdoor temperature, a sensor (17) for detecting a in return temperature Treturn of a heat carrying medium circulated in a heat distribution system with a flow rate, and a controller (13). The controller is adapted to determine a required heating power Preq to be delivered by said heat distribution system to maintain a heating power balance according to Preq=Ploss−Psource, where Ploss is an approximation of heating power losses from said building, and includes a dynamic approximation of heating power transfer through walls of the building, based on at least said desired indoor temperature, said detected outdoor temperature, a heat transfer coefficient of the wall, and a heat capacity of the wall, and Psource is an approximation of heating power sources external to said heating system, and, based on the detected return temperature, control a combination of forward flow temperature and flow rate so as to ensure that the distribution system delivers said required heating power. According to the present invention, a dynamic model of the heating power balance of the building is used to control the heating power delivered by the heating system. This results in improved control compared a control scheme based only on flow temperature control based on outdoor temperature.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.