Smart Grid Coordination in Building HVAC Systems: Computational Efficiency of Constrained Eloc

In the context of day-ahead electricity prices, the method of Economic Model Predictive Control (EMPC) has been shown to provide expenditure reduction in building HVAC systems with thermal energy storage. However, these reductions can only be achieved if the EMPC prediction horizon is sufficiently large. This work develops an alternate controller, constrained economic linear optimal control (CELOC), and shows that CELOC will yield performance similar to large-horizon EMPC but with a virtual insensitivity to horizon size. Thus, application of CELOC will require a fraction of the computational effort while yielding nearly identical economic performance.