Minimizing energy costs of commercial buildings by integrating demand side and supply side strategies

Abstract

Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning dominates the overall energy bill of commercial buildings. Additionally, developing countries with poor grid reliability experience recurrent power outages leading to the use of diesel generators that further increase these costs. In this paper, we propose an algorithmic approach that combines demand and supply side strategies to reduce the overall energy costs. Results from the algorithm are compared against an existing optimization framework to demonstrate its efficacy. The algorithm achieves near optimal solutions in about three orders of magnitude less time than the optimization framework. Simulations demonstrate an average savings of 20% relative to the baseline operational practices for commercial buildings such as cell towers.