Impact of Pump Control on Indoor Climate and Energy Efficiency of Hydronic Networks

The use of variable speed pump allows to save energy. Therefore, the impact of these technologieson the heating system and thermal comfort in buildings is rarely highlighted. The objective of this study is to show the possible impact of variable speed pump control on thermal comfort, energyconsumption and costs in buildings.The paper describes a method to evaluate the performance of a heating system in terms of thermalcomfort and global costs. A simulator has been implemented under Matlab/Simulink using theSIMBAD Toolbox to carry out annual simulations. The simulator is then used to applied the developed methodology and to evaluate an exemplary building.The results in this particular case show that constant speed pump control leads to good resultsregarding thermal comfort. Pump control based on differential pressure provides similar results tothose with constant speed pump in terms of comfort. However, these methods allows to save about90% of energy consumptions for pumping and also reduce by 5% the consumptions for heating.Control of pump speed based on demand allows to save even more energy but with restrictions inthermal comfort