The objective of this work is to develop an availability-based, on-line expert system to manage a thermal energy storage air conditioning system. The management system is designed to be used by mechanical engineers in the field of air conditioning control and maintenance. Specifically, the expert system permits the user to easily monitor the second law of thermodynamics operating efficiencies of the major components and the system as a whole in addition to the daily scheduled operating parameters of a cold thermal storage system. Through the use of computer-generated and continually updated screen display pages, the user is permitted interaction with the expert system. The knowledge-based system is developed with a commercially available expert system shell that is resident in a personal computer. In the case studied, 130 various analogue and binary inputs/outputs are used. The knowledge base for the thermal energy storage expert system included nine different display pages that are continually updated, 25 rules, three tasks, and three loops.

KEYWORDS: expert systems, computers, energy storage, air conditioning, maintenance, monitoring, ice storage, cold sources, microcomputers, controls, efficiency, optimisation.