Design and Implementation of a Low-Energy-Consumption Air-Conditioning Control System for Smart Vehicle

About 7% of people’s daily time is spent in taking vehicles between office and home. Besides, with the improvement of the living standard in today’s society, people’s requirements for a comfortable environment inside the car are constantly increasing and this must rely on an effective vehicle air conditioner to maintain the comfort of the cabin environment. In general, a vehicle air conditioner uses the air-mixing mode to regulate the temperature control system. In this mode of operation, the compressor needs to work continuously, which is extremely energy consuming. The vehicle’s air conditioner is greatly affected by the inner and outer heat load, which are generated therein. Furthermore, the heat load is instantly changeable. Therefore, only when the controller can adapt to the feature of heat load, then we can find the optimal control method, thus enabling the vehicle’s air conditioner to interact with the actual heat load to supply the balanced cooling capacity and, as a result, create the most comfortable environment inside the cabin with minimum energy consumption. For this purpose, we bring up in this paper a low-energy-consumption smart vehicle air-conditioning control system to detect total heat load, which can change the vehicle’s air-conditioning capacity mode to maintain the average temperature at 25.2°C∼26.2°C and the average humidity at 46.6%∼54.4% in the cabin. When the inner heat load is stable, the rest times of the compressor can reach 16∼23 times per hour, which attains a rate of fuel saving around 21%∼28%. With the proposed architecture, the purpose of the low-energy-consumption vehicle air-conditioning system can be achieved, which, at the same time, creates a comfortable environment inside the cabin.