Multimodal energy management system for residential building prosumers utilizing various lifestyles

Abstract

• The multimodal energy management system is compatible with various lifestyles. • System adjustable to conditions such as emergencies, local celebrations, and occupancy. • Real-world weather data and real-time electricity prices are used in the testing. • Reduction of the yearly electricity bill in two out of the three tested regions. • Increase of the average SOC by at least 10% in all of the three tested regions. The rapid diffusion of smart home technologies imposes new energy management and consumption challenges to residential prosumers. Considering the additional energy demands of these technologies and restrictions imposed on occupants to manage their energy consumption regularly, the need for autonomous energy management systems (EMSs) arises. In particular, an effective decision-making system fed with real-time data can improve the overall building consumption performance. In this paper, a new multimodal EMS is presented for implementing smart residential prosumers. The proposed EMS is equipped with multiple modes to satisfy different objectives throughout a year, thus allowing the utilization of prosumers with various lifestyles driven by current needs. The residential building is modeled using the simulation software GridLAB-D, utilizing weather and pricing data from three geographical regions of the United States for 3 years period. The performance of the proposed multimodal system is compared to a single-mode EMS whose sole objective is the reduction of the electricity bill. Due to the multiple objectives of the proposed EMS, we utilized three different metrics including electricity bill and average state of charge (SOC). Analysis of the results exhibits a reduction in the yearly electricity bill of about 1.8 dollars ($) in two out of three regions and higher average SOC by at least 10% while satisfying the desired lifestyle.