Journal of Process Control, Vol.24, No.8, 1301-1310, 2014
Smart grid coordination in building HVAC systems: EMPC and the impact of forecasting
Energy consumption by heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems exhibits a clear correlation with electricity prices. The method of economic model predictive control (EMPC) can be used in conjunction with thermal energy storage (TES) to time-shift power consumption away from periods of high demand to periods of low energy cost. Dynamic electricity pricing and weather condition forecasts can be readily incorporated within this methodology. Unfortunately, the receding horizon nature of this control strategy makes it very susceptible to the quality of the forecasts used. To this end, the development and implementation of several forecasting methods will be discussed. Finally, the EMPC performance of these methods will be assessed on a simple building example using active TES. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:Process control;Optimization;Infnite-time optimal control;Constrained systems;Systems engineering