Managing plug-loads for demand response within buildings

Abstract

Detailed and accurate energy accounting is an important first step in improving energy efficiency within buildings. Based on this information, building managers can perform active energy management, especially during demand response situations that require load shedding over short time scales. While individual plug-loads are an important target for demand response, they pose significant challenges due to their distributed nature and the significant diversity of devices that are deployed.This paper presents the design and implementation of our energy accounting and management system which is specifically geared towards managing plug-loads within enterprise buildings. Our system provides fine-grained visibility and control of plug-loads to building managers, allowing them to deal with demand response situations through user-specified actuation policies. At its core, our system consists of our wireless smart energy meter with actuation capabilities, ZigBee-based wireless network infrastructure, and our Demand Response Server, an analysis engine that provides interfaces for initiating load-shedding policies. Our micro-benchmarks show the different methods that building managers can utilize to efficiently manage devices during demand response events.