Handling thermal comfort in economic model predictive control schemes for demand response

Abstract

Addressing thermal comfort is an important aspect of applying economic model predictive control (E-MPC) schemes with the objective to perform demand response (DR), e.g. minimize operational cost. This paper compares the performance of four E-MPC schemes using both single-objective and multi-objective formulations to address thermal comfort. It is difficult to proclaim the superior formulation as the notion of thermal comfort is a subjective matter. However, the single-objective problem formulation proposed in this paper contains a parameter, εmax, which describes the maximum acceptable deviations from the preferred indoor air temperature. This parameter can be regarded as a user-defined indicator of the acceptable deviations from the preferred temperature or, in other words, their ‘DR willingness’.