Reducing peak electricity demand in building climate control using real-time pricing and model predictive control

A method to reduce peak electricity demand in building climate control by using real-time electricity pricing and applying model predictive control (MPC) is investigated. We propose to use a newly developed time-varying, hourly-based electricity tariff for end-consumers, that has been designed to truly reflect marginal costs of electricity provision, based on spot market prices as well as on electricity grid load levels, which is directly incorporated into the MPC cost function. Since this electricity tariff is only available for a limited time window into the future we use least-squares support vector machines for electricity tariff price forecasting and thus provide the MPC controller with the necessary estimated time-varying costs for the whole prediction horizon. In the given context, the hourly pricing provides an economic incentive for a building controller to react sensitively with respect to high spot market electricity prices and high grid loading, respectively. Within the proposed tariff regime, grid-friendly behaviour is rewarded. It can be shown that peak electricity demand of buildings can be significantly reduced. The here presented study is an example for the successful implementation of demand response (DR) in the field of building climate control.