A number of topics, although important for the matters treated above, have been left out. Some brief comments on them are therefore useful in order to establish what might be called the “boundary conditions” of this book. The first topic is a more thorough treatment of control design by taking advantage of the fact that […]

More involved problems reinforce the view that adaptive controllers such as the ones addressed in this book are basic “building blocks” of more complicated systems, such as networked systems connecting renewable energy sources that face uncertainty. The “green island” paradigm provides an example of such type of problems: Consider an island for which a number […]

While classical energy markets are characterized by a strong regulation, with central­ized power control being adequate, recent trends point in directions with increased degrees of freedom. An example is provided by distributed power grids with some degree of authority among local producers and energy markets with varying prices. Figure 8.3 illustrates a typical problem posed […]

When considered in isolation, the objective of a DCSF is to convert as much solar power as possible to thermal energy that can be used, for instance, for energy produc­tion. As shown in Fig. 8.2, the fluid outlet temperature should be closed to the value Topt that yields the maximum efficiency. However, due to the […]

The importance of control of DCSFs, and of adaptive control in particular, may perhaps be only fully understood by considering the wider context of renewable energy production. Of course, control is required to maintain energy production plants in a state that is adequate for their objectives, while ensuring equipment integrity and an extended useful life, […]

Finally, one should mention the way in which constraints are tackled. Given an estimate of the plant model parameters, the control algorithms considered in this book that optimize a cost compute the manipulated variable using an explicit formula. This is no longer possible if an hard constraint, that is to say a constraint on the […]

Another example of a topic of central interest for applications is tackling the adap­tation transient. Every adaptation algorithm entails an initial phase in which the estimates of the model parameters upon which the control decision relies are much deviated from the actual parameter values. This estimation error entails a transient in the plant that is […]

In MMAC, at least implicitly, local linear controllers are patched together to form an approximation to a global nonlinear controller. It is thus possible to take advantage of this fact to compensate some plant nonlinearities. This compensation is only approximate because it relies on a finite number of local controllers being patched. Furthermore, it may […]