Model Predictive Control of Building On/Off HVAC Systems to Compensate Fluctuations in Solar Power Generation

Ahstract-The high variability in solar photovoltaic (PV) power production causes voltage variations temporally and spatially on distribution feeders and substations. To tackle this problem, we propose absorbing most of the PV power generation locally by building loads such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) units to minimize the impact on the grid and reduce the need for large energy storage devices. In this paper, we formulate a mixed integer quadratic optimization problem to optimally dispatch a fleet of on/off HVAC units to consume most of PV power generation locally while maintaining occupants comfort and hardware constraints. On/off HVAC units are widely available in residential buildings in addition to many small to medium size commercial buildings. Simulation results show that by assigning the proper number of aggregated HVAC units, the proposed mechanism achieves good PV tracking performance without jeopardizing occupants comfort. This study concludes that most of the PV generation can be consumed by building loads with the help of proper control strategies, thereby permitting to increase solar PV penetration levels.