Multi-Loop Solar Energy Control System
The project focuses on the implementation of MPC to optimize thermal management of a solar energy platform, where three loops (solar thermal collection loop, heat pump loop and cooling loop) are connected to a water tank. Multiple temperature sensors are placed at different spots to monitor the system status and serve control decision.
My work focuses on redesign the control architecture around a single STM32 microcontroller to replace three distributed Arduino units, written in C.
The STM32 implementation introduced a hierarchical strategy. A basic layer enforces safety and feasibility constraints, and a time-triggered supervisory layer uses RTC alarms to execute structured ON/OFF patterns with hour-level precision.
The STM32 platform enabled a shift toward MPC, and a proportional control strategy was implemented as a baseline controller to validate system response.
