There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Use of model predictive control and weather forecasts for energy efficient building climate control

A communication infrastructure is an essential part to the success of the emerging smart grid. A scalable and pervasive communication infrastructure is crucial in both construction and operation of a smart grid. In this paper, we present the background and motivation of communication infrastructures in smart grid systems. We also summarize major requirements that smart grid communications must meet. From the experience of several industrial trials on smart grid with communication infrastructures, we expect that the traditional carbon fuel based power plants can cooperate with emerging distributed renewable energy such as wind, solar, etc, to reduce the carbon fuel consumption and consequent green house gas such as carbon dioxide emission. The consumers can minimize their expense on energy by adjusting their intelligent home appliance operations to avoid the peak hours and utilize the renewable energy instead. We further explore the challenges for a communication infrastructure as the part of a complex smart grid system. Since a smart grid system might have over millions of consumers and devices, the demand of its reliability and security is extremely critical. Through a communication infrastructure, a smart grid can improve power reliability and quality to eliminate electricity blackout. Security is a challenging issue since the on-going smart grid systems facing increasing vulnerabilities as more and more automation, remote monitoring/controlling and supervision entities are interconnected.

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1315&context=electricalengineeringfacpub

A Survey on Smart Grid CommunicationInfrastructures: Motivations, Requirements andChallenges

Theory and applications of HVAC control systems – A review of model predictive control (MPC)

The significant benefits associated with microgrids have led to vast efforts to expand their penetration in electric power systems. Although their deployment is rapidly growing, there are still many challenges to efficiently design, control, and operate microgrids when connected to the grid, and also when in islanded mode, where extensive research activities are underway to tackle these issues. It is necessary to have an across-the-board view of the microgrid integration in power systems. This paper presents a review of issues concerning microgrids and provides an account of research in areas related to microgrids, including distributed generation, microgrid value propositions, applications of power electronics, economic issues, microgrid operation and control, microgrid clusters, and protection and communications issues.

State of the Art in Research on Microgrids: A Review

We present a Stochastic Model Predictive Control (SMPC) algorithm that maintains predefined comfort levels in building Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems while minimizing the overall energy use. The strategy uses the knowledge of the statistics of the building occupancy and ambient conditions forecasts errors and determines the optimal control inputs by solving a scenario-based stochastic optimization problem. Peculiarities of this strategy are that it does not make assumptions on the distribution of the uncertain variables, and that it allows dynamical learning of these statistics from true data through the use of copulas, i.e., opportune probabilistic description of random vectors. The scheme, investigated on a prototypical student laboratory, shows good performance and computational tractability.

/pdf/a-scenario-based-predictive-control-approach-to-building-4q62gwkm1x.pdf

A scenario-based predictive control approach to building HVAC management systems

http://staff.www.ltu.se/~damvar/Publications/Parisio%20et%20al.%20-%202014%20-%20Implementation%20of%20a%20Scenario-based%20MPC%20for%20HVAC%20Systems%20an%20Experimental%20Case%20Study.pdf

Implementation of a Scenario-Based MPC for HVAC Systems: An Experimental Case Study

Improving energy efficiency of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems is a primary objective for the society. Model Predictive Control (MPC) techniques for HVAC systems have recently received particular attention, since they can naturally account for several factors, such as weather and occupancy forecasts, comfort ranges and actuation constraints. Developing effective MPC based control strategies for HVAC systems is nontrivial, since buildings dynamics are nonlinear and affected by various uncertainties. Further, the complexity of the MPC problem and the burden of on-line computations can lead to difficulties in integrating this scheme into a building management system.

/pdf/control-of-hvac-systems-via-scenario-based-explicit-mpc-1gm495wonj.pdf

Control of HVAC systems via scenario-based explicit MPC

In this paper a distributed control strategy for coordinating multiple battery energy storage systems to support frequency regulation in power systems with high penetration of renewable generation is proposed. The approach is based on an online convex optimisation framework that considers both the operating costs of storage systems and the frequency regulation requirements. The proposed framework uses a dynamic regret based on the last available information up to the current point in time of renewable generation and demand, which are uncertainty sources. The approach provides more accurate control than the currently employed prediction-based algorithms and it can be implemented in a distributed manner using a multi-agent system framework that facilitates plug-and-play functionality. The effectiveness and scalability of the proposed strategy is assessed through several case studies.

/pdf/distributed-control-of-battery-energy-storage-systems-for-3q5itme0tu.pdf

Distributed Control of Battery Energy Storage Systems for Improved Frequency Regulation

A novel distributed algorithm is proposed in this paper for a network of consumers coupled by energy resource sharing constraints, which aims at minimizing the aggregated electricity costs. Each consumers is equipped with an energy management system that schedules the shiftable loads accounting for user preferences, while an aggregator entity coordinates the consumers demand and manages the interaction with the grid and the shared energy storage system (ESS) via a distributed strategy. The proposed distributed coordination algorithm requires the computation of Mixed Integer Linear Programs (MILPs) at each iteration. The proposed approach guarantees constraints satisfaction, cooperation among consumers, and fairness in the use of the shared resources among consumers. The strategy requires limited message exchange between each consumer and the aggregator, and no messaging among the consumers, which protects consumers privacy. Performance of the proposed distributed algorithm in comparison with a centralized one is illustrated using numerical experiments.

Alessandra Parisio

Papers

A scenario-based predictive control approach to building HVAC management systems

Implementation of a Scenario-Based MPC for HVAC Systems: An Experimental Case Study

Control of HVAC systems via scenario-based explicit MPC

Distributed Control of Battery Energy Storage Systems for Improved Frequency Regulation

Demand response for aggregated residential consumers with energy storage sharing