Scheduling-based real time energy flow control strategy for building energy management system

We propose a novel strategy for BEMS (Building Energy Management System), which efficiently controls energy flows in a building so as to minimize the total cost of energy for a finite period. We also consider Demand Response (DR) events during the period. The proposed strategy includes prediction, long-term scheduling, and real-time control (RTC) of components within a building. During the period, the process from prediction to RTC is iterated in every time unit when the system status is changed by a dynamic environment. The scheduler determines the optimal energy flows based on the prediction, and RTC utilizes the scheduling result so that the energy flow can be adaptively controlled in a dynamic environment. Finally, the system status change information is fed back for the next iteration. Simulation results indicate potential cost savings that are approximately 10-20% compared to a typical BEMS with a conventional RTC scheme. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.