Transactive control of air-conditioning systems in buildings for participation in Singapore’s Demand Response market through load curtailment

Abstract

Air-conditioning and mechanical ventilation (ACMV) systems account for significant electrical demand within buildings. These systems have large thermal time constants and can be utilized as thermal energy storage. This paper is focused on participation of commercial buildings in Singapore’s Demand Response (DR) programme through curtailment in electricity demand of ACMV systems for financial incentive and power grid benefits. A novel Transactive Energy-based virtual market is proposed for a building where multiple air-conditioning zone agents transact to purchase conditioned-air from central ACMV system. These zone agents consider forecasts of occupancy and outdoor temperatures to submit bids for conditioned-air corresponding to increasing electricity market prices, using a novel dynamic programming approach to utilize the temporal flexibility in cooling demand through pre-cooling. ACMV electricity demand bid is calculated based on net conditioned-air bids by using existing accurate building models in whole-building energy modeling (BEM) platforms corresponding to increasing electricity prices for submission to DR market. Case studies are performed in MATLAB–EnergyPlus co-simulation environment on a benchmark five-zone building model representing a small office building. Results show that the proposed control is effective in providing curtailment of ACMV electricity demand for DR according to real Singapore market price signals, while respecting occupants’ thermal comfort preferences and up to 56% reduction in ACMV electrical power demand is possible for 1 h. Further, revenue analysis shows that DR market participation incentive from 1 h participation would be higher than energy costs for ACMV operation for the entire day, which makes the DR market participation commercially lucrative.