Radiant heating controls and methods for an environmental control system

A method of controlling a thermostat comprising:

• providing a thermostat comprising:
• a housing;
• a memory;
• and
• a processing system disposed within the housing and being in operative communication with the memory and with a radiant heating system, the processing system being configured and programmed to control the radiant heating system;
• determining a parameterized model from which a temperature response of an enclosure responsive to a candidate radiant heating control strategy may be determined, the parameterized model being based at least in part on historical temperature information stored in said memory and acquired during at least one historical period in which the enclosure was heated by the radiant heating system under the control of said thermostat;
• determining an optimal radiant heating control strategy from among a plurality of candidate radiant heating control strategies by using said parameterized model to compute a plurality of predicted temperature responses corresponding respectively to the plurality of candidate radiant heating control strategies and processing said predicted temperature responses according to one or more predetermined assessment criteria;
• and
• controlling the radiant heating system according to the determined optimal radiant heating control strategy.

A computer-program product, tangibly embodied in a non-transitory machine readable storage medium, including instructions configured to cause a data processing apparatus of a thermostat to:

• determine a parameterized model from which a temperature response of an enclosure responsive to a candidate radiant heating control strategy may be determined, the parameterized model being based at least in part on historical temperature information stored in memory and acquired during at least one historical period in which the enclosure was heated by a radiant heating system under the control of the thermostat;
• determine an optimal radiant heating control strategy from among a plurality of candidate radiant heating control strategies by using said parameterized model to compute a plurality of predicted temperature responses corresponding respectively to the plurality of candidate radiant heating control strategies and processing said predicted temperature responses according to one or more predetermined assessment criteria;
• and
• control the radiant heating system according to the determined optimal radiant heating control strategy.