Economic Model-Predictive Control of Building Heating Systems Using Backbone Energy System Modelling Framework

Accessing the demand-side management potential of the residential heating sector requires sophisticated control capable of predicting buildings’ response to changes in heating and cooling power, e.g., model-predictive control. However, while studies exploring its impacts both for individual buildings as well as energy markets exist, building-level control in large-scale energy system models has not been properly examined. In this work, we demonstrate the feasibility of the open-source energy system modelling framework Backbone for simplified model-predictive control of buildings, helping address the above-mentioned research gap. Hourly rolling horizon optimisations were performed to minimise the costs of flexible heating and cooling electricity consumption for a modern Finnish detached house and an apartment block with ground-to-water heat pump systems for the years 2015–2022. Compared to a baseline using a constant electricity price signal, optimisation with hourly spot electricity market prices resulted in 3.1–17.5% yearly cost savings depending on the simulated year, agreeing with comparable literature. Furthermore, the length of the optimisation horizon was not found to have a significant impact on the results beyond 36 h. Overall, the simplified model-predictive control was observed to behave rationally, lending credence to the integration of simplified building models within large-scale energy system modelling frameworks.

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