Application of a Novel Grey Model for Forecasting Indoor Air Temperature in Poultry Houses: Control Strategy

Highlights A new control strategy was developed to control the indoor air temperature of poultry houses. Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the new and typical control strategies. The effects of the control strategy on indoor air temperature and energy consumption were evaluated. The new control strategy can reduce horizontal and vertical temperature differences and energy consumption. This analysis provides a baseline for future design of environmental control systems in livestock farming. Abstract. Current control strategies implemented in most environmental control systems rely purely on onsite sensor data to determine the operating status of the control devices, while neglecting to consider the delayed control effects caused by time lags of the devices. These strategies cannot provide accurate in-time indoor environmental control, causing increasingly high energy consumption. To overcome these disadvantages, a new control strategy, which determines the operating status of control devices based on predicted temperature data, was developed, and its effectiveness was evaluated through field experiments. A comparative study was conducted using the new control strategy and a typically implemented control strategy. The two control strategies were respectively assigned to two adjacent commercial poultry houses. The indoor air temperature and electricity usage were recorded during the field experiments. The results showed that the air temperature was significantly higher in the house with the typical control strategy than in the house with the new control strategy (p < 0.05) in summer and significantly lower (p < 0.05) in winter. The new control strategy reduced the maximum temperature difference from 5.8°C to 3.1°C in summer and from 13.4°C to 5.2°C in winter. The new control strategy reduced energy consumption by 4.61% to 7.38% compared to the typical control strategy. It is concluded that the house with the new control strategy had a lower air temperature difference that was beneficial for energy savings.