Integrated control of RTUs and refrigeration equipment in convenience stores

Convenience stores with refrigerated display cases are ubiquitous in much of the developed world. For such buildings it is common to utilize multiple rooftop units (RTU) to serve the retail area and multiple coolers or freezers to provide cooling for merchandise. The overall objective of this paper is to develop and assess an integrated control approach for typical convenience store applications using a virtual testbed. The integrated controls will coordinate the operation of multiple RTUs and refrigeration systems for the purposes of reducing energy consumption and electrical peak demand. For practical implementation, a model-based predictive control algorithm is developed and evaluated that requires no additional sensors. Convenience stores are everywhere and opportunities for optimizing controls would be significant.