Optimal demand response strategy of a portfolio of multiple commercial buildings: Methods and a case study

Abstract

Commercial building demand response control is an effective way to reduce summer electrical peak demand in cities. However, a portfolio of a large number of buildings has different demand response control strategies than individual buildings. In this article, an optimization method is proposed for scheduling demand response strategies for multiple commercial buildings that can be recognized as a multi-building portfolio during demand response. Through this optimal scheduling, decision makers can determine which buildings should participate in the demand response program that controls the strategies that should be used as well as the corresponding optimum starting/ending time. In this article, the optimal scheduling problem is converted into a time series 0-1 programming problem and is solved by the Branch and Bound method, with three optimization objectives of smooth reduction, maximum reduction, and maximum economic benefits. As a pilot demand response case test, the measured data for 18 large commercial buildings (as a multi-building portfolio) in a recent large-scale demand response experiment were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the optimal scheduling method. The results demonstrated that the optimal scheduling scheme can significantly improve the demand response effectiveness of a large number of buildings together.