Publication

Coalitional model predictive control of parabolic-trough solar collector fields with population-dynamics assistance

Journal Article (2023)

Journal

Applied Energy

Pages

120740

Number

334

Doc link

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.120740

File

Download the digital copy of the doc pdf document

Abstract

Parabolic-trough solar collector fields are large-scale systems, so the application of centralized optimization-based control methods to these systems is often not suitable for real-time control. As such, this paper formulates a novel coalitional control approach as an appropriate alternative to the centralized scheme. The key idea is to split the overall solar collector field into smaller subsystems, each of them governed by a local controller. Then, controllers are clustered into coalitions to solve a local optimization-based problem related to the corresponding subset of subsystems, so that an approximate solution of the original centralized problem can be obtained in a decentralized fashion. However, the operational constraints of the solar collector field couple the optimization problems of the multiple coalitions, thus limiting the ability to solve them in a fully decentralized manner. To overcome this issue, a novel population-dynamics-assisted resource allocation strategy is proposed as a mechanism to decouple the local optimization problems of the multiple coalitions. The proposed coalitional methodology allows to solve the multiple local subproblems in parallel, hence reducing the overall computational burden, while guaranteeing the satisfaction of the operational constraints and without significantly compromising the overall performance. The effectiveness of proposed approach is shown through numerical simulations of a 10- and 100-loop version of the ACUREX solar collector field of Plataforma Solar de Almería, Spain.

Categories

automation, optimisation.

Author keywords

Scientific reference A. Sánchez-Amores, J.P. Martínez, J.M. Maestre, C. Ocampo-Martínez, E. Fernández and N. Quijano. Coalitional model predictive control of parabolic-trough solar collector fields

Scientific reference

A. Sánchez-Amores, J.P. Martínez, J.M. Maestre, C. Ocampo-Martínez, E. Fernández and N. Quijano. Coalitional model predictive control of parabolic-trough solar collector fields with population-dynamics assistance. Applied Energy(334): 120740, 2023.