Investigation of practical issues in building thermal parameter estimation

Practical issues in implementation of recursive least-squares techniques are investigated through experiments for the robust parameter estimation of a building's thermal processes. A set of supervisory rules is derived from the basic physical laws and the necessary conditions for stable systems. An approach to robust parameter estimation of a building's thermal systems is developed and implemented for the real-time identification of an outdoor test-room with high solar gains and radiant heating. Experimental results show that the room temperatures computed by the identified models agree well with the measured data. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.