The university building is an ideal test environment, thus our scientists, being first in Europe, used the so-called predictive regulator to control heating distribution. A superior software layer in the control system, this computer program takes care of optimizing all the energy flows of the building. The software performs calculations based on the mathematical description of the building´s thermodynamics in half-hour cycles. It checks current indoor and outdoor temperature changes, weather forecasts and other parameters, and then regulates the flow of heating water in the system.
The control algorithms of the predictive regulator were developed during few years by a research group at the Department of Control Engineering of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and over time, individual team members shared their experience at internships on prestigious foreign universities in teams dealing with the issue (ETH Zurich, KU Leuven, UC Berkeley and others ). Implementing the predictive regulator in the university building is the first real application in Europe, so our foreign partners had a tremendous interest in the practical knowledge of our students.
You can find details about the project here.
Webs of Hospodářské noviny and Praha TV also informed about the heating system.