Patent ID: 8600561

Claim:
A thermostat comprising: a housing; a memory; and a processing system disposed within the housing, the processing system being in operative communication with one or more temperature sensors to determine an ambient temperature in an enclosure, the processing system being in operative communication with the memory, and the processing system being in operative communication with a radiant heating system to heat the enclosure via radiant heating such that the ambient temperature is near a setpoint temperature, wherein control of the radiant heating system is performed in part by the processing system: determining a parameterized model from which a predicted value for the ambient temperature of the enclosure responsive to a candidate radiant heating control strategy may be determined, the parameterized model being based on historical ambient temperatures for the enclosure acquired by the thermostat during associated historical periods in which radiant heat control was actuated by the thermostat and stored in said memory; selecting a set of candidate control strategies for use in controlling the radiant heating system, wherein each said candidate control strategy is a binary-valued control trajectory having a candidate overall on-time percentage over a predefined candidate control duration, wherein each said candidate control strategy is constrained to have a minimum number of on-time cycles that achieves the candidate overall on-time percentage; executing a predictive algorithm to determine an optimal control strategy from the set of candidate control strategies by: applying each candidate control strategy to the parameterized model to predict a corresponding ambient temperature trajectory; and processing each said corresponding ambient temperature trajectories in view of one or more predetermined assessment functions to select an optimal one of said candidate control strategies according to one or more predetermined assessment criteria; and controlling the radiant heating system according to the selected optimal control strategy.