Ventilative Cooling and Control Systems

Robust control systems are essential to guarantee an efficient usage of ventilative cooling. The most important challenges of controlling natural ventilative cooling are the outdoor environmental conditions like wind, rain, noise and pollen; security and interaction with and satisfaction of the user. The main control strategies and components of natural ventilative cooling, including actuators and sensors are described. From case studies, the following lessons are learned. The main driver for control of natural ventilative cooling systems is thermal comfort and outdoor weather conditions. Optimization and commissioning of ventilative cooling control is critical to maximize the cooling potential as well as to prevent overcooling. Conclusions on the interaction of the user with the ventilation cooling control are twofold. On the one hand, automatic control is preferred to manual control of ventilative cooling. On the other hand, the user should be able to overrule this automatic control. Suggestions for design are formulated. The users and their expectations of controllability play a central role. Moreover, the future maintenance of the actuators have to be taken into account in the design phase.