Online Temperature Control of a Residential Building in Smart Grid Environment

In this paper, we investigate the problem of energy management for an HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) system of a residential building in smart grid environment without violating user thermal comfort limits. Specifically, we intend to minimize the long-term total cost (i.e., the sum of energy cost and thermal discomfort cost) associated with the HVAC system by taking into account uncertainties of outdoor temperature and electricity price. Due to the time coupling incurred by indoor temperature dynamics, it is very challenging to solve the formulated minimization problem. To address the challenge, we propose an online HVAC control algorithm based on Lyapunov optimization techniques without requiring any parameter predictions. Simulation results based on real-world traces show that the proposed algorithm can reduce energy cost significantly with small sacrifice in thermal comfort.