Occupancy-informed predictive control strategies for enhancing the energy flexibility of grid-interactive buildings

• Analyzing and identifying the energy flexibility potential of occupancy records. • Integrating the occupancy prediction model into a control-oriented thermal model. • Designing occupancy-informed strategies for controlling building energy flexibility. • Evaluating occupancy-informed MPC in different scenarios and weather conditions. Building energy flexibility plays a major role in the stability of the current and future electric grid, especially with the rapid electrification in the building and transportation sectors that significantly changed electrical demand patterns. Accordingly, researchers have explored different venues to activate and control building energy flexibility without jeopardizing the occupants’ comfort. However, most predictive control strategies to date have only used occupancy information as soft or hard constraints, which limited the full potential of such information in enhancing the energy flexibility of buildings when incorporated into the decision-making process. To this end, this paper proposes a framework to develop and evaluate occupancy-informed control strategies to enhance buildings’ energy flexibility through occupancy variation. The objectives of the paper are to 1) analyze real occupancy data to extract typical patterns and the main occupancy levels, 2) develop a prediction model to forecast day-ahead occupancy profiles, 3) develop an occupancy-informed thermal dynamics model for controlling the indoor environment of a building, and 4) develop and evaluate occupancy-informed control strategies considering different scenarios and weather conditions. The developed framework was applied to an institutional building in Quebec, Canada as a case study and the results showed load curtailment of up to 40% and more than 60% energy cost reduction. These results established the important role of integrating occupancy schedules into control strategies which pave the way for integrating these strategies into the local energy market.