Thermal-comfort Aware Online Co-scheduling Framework for HVAC, Battery Systems, and Appliances in Smart Buildings

摘要

Energy management in buildings is vital for reducing electricitycosts and maximizing the comfort of occupants. Excess solar generationcan be used by combining a battery storage system and a heating,ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system so that occupants feel comfortable.Despite several studies on the scheduling of appliances, batteries,and HVAC, comprehensive and time scalable approaches are required thatintegrate such predictive information as renewable generation and thermalcomfort. In this paper, we propose an thermal-comfort aware online coschedulingframework that incorporates optimal energy scheduling and aprediction model of PV generation and thermal comfort with the modelpredictive control (MPC) approach. We introduce a photovoltaic (PV) energynowcasting and thermal-comfort-estimation model that provides usefulinformation for optimization. The energy management problem is formulatedas three coordinated optimization problems that cover fast and slowtime-scales by considering predicted information. This approach reducesthe time complexity without a significant negative impact on the result’sglobal nature and its quality. Experimental results show that our proposedframework achieves optimal energy management that takes into account thetrade-off between electricity expenses and thermal comfort. Our sensitivityanalysis indicates that introducing a battery significantly improves thetrade-off relationship.