Optimal power demand management for cluster-level commercial buildings using the game theoretic method

Abstract

Power demand management, particularly demand response controls, is the effort from the demand side to help the supply side management for helping maintain grid balance and also bring the economic benefits for building owners. Most of building demand management and demand response control strategies for commercial buildings only focus on a single building. However, as for the cluster-level buildings, which are sometimes involved in an account for electricity charge and also the main concern of smart grids, such conventional individual-level control strategies will not be effective. A game theory-based decentralized control strategy is therefore developed for cluster-level building demand management by simultaneously optimizing the indoor air temperature set-point and the operation of active thermal storage. Without gathering all the required information of buildings to a central optimization system, the cluster-level building demand management can be realized in a decentralized way. Case studies are conducted and results show that the proposed decentralized control strategy can increase the peak demand reduction, over two times than that when the demand management of buildings is conducted in an uncoordinated mode. Meanwhile, the performance of the proposed decentralized control strategy is closely approached to the results that are optimized in a centralized mode.