Discrete-Event Systems-Based Power Admission Control of Thermal Appliances in Smart Buildings

This paper addresses the admission control of thermal appliances in the context of smart buildings. The scheduling of thermal devices operation is formulated in the framework of discrete-event systems, which allows for the modeling and design of admission control to be carried out in a systematic manner and ensuring the existence of the feasible scheduling prior to exploring control solutions. Two algorithms are developed for the purpose of peak demand reduction. While the first algorithm validates the schedulability for the control of thermal appliances, the second algorithm may achieve a more efficient use of available capacity by exploring the concept of max-min fairness. Simulation studies are carried out in MATLAB/Simulink platform and the results show a noticeable improvement on peak power reduction.