Demand response optimized heat pump control for service sector buildings

With an increasing amount of volatile renewable electrical energy, the balancing of demand and supply becomes more and more demanding. Demand response is one of the emerging tools in this new landscape. Targeting service sector buildings, we investigated a tariff driven demand response model as a means to shave electrical peak loads and thus reducing grid balancing energy. In this paper is presented a software framework for load shifting which uses a tariff signal for the electric energy as minimization target. The framework can be used both on top of an existing building management system to shift heat generation towards low-tariff times, as well as to simulate load shifting for different buildings, heat pumps and storage configurations. Its modular architecture allows us to easily replace optimizers, weather data providers or building management system adapters. Our results show that even with the current TOU tariff system, up to 34 % of cost savings and up to 20 % reduction in energy consumption can be achieved. With Sub-MPC, a modified MPC optimizer, we could reduce computing times by a factor 50, while only slightly affecting the quality of the optimization.