Experimental Study of Economic Model Predictive Control in Building Energy Systems

This paper presents results from testing an economic model predictive control (EMPC) strategy in an office building located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. The control strategy includes an economic objective function that is designed to account for the combination of energy and demand costs under a time-of-use (TOU) rate structure. A min-max optimization problem is formulated and solved as a linear program. The tests were carried out with the controller sited in a remote location and with the loop being closed over the Internet. The results show that the EMPC strategy was successful at reducing energy costs compared to the baseline case for the considered building.