Energy Management of Smart Buildings in Low-Temperature District Heating Systems

Energy management for an integrated energy system of a smart building is critical for residents to save operating costs. Under a district heating tariff scheme, where return temperature is taken into account, control decisions of electric heating devices in a building should be optimized. However, the energy management considering dynamic models of return temperature in low-temperature district heating systems is challenging. In this paper, an energy management framework for a smart building is proposed to control electric heating devices, thermal energy storage units and thermostatic valves for space heating and domestic hot water demand, minimizing the total electricity and heat cost for building residents. Multiple heating devices and dynamics of temperature are modeled for optimizing energy management, with effective linearization methods applied. New rule-based control functions are proposed to address the dynamics of temperature via controlling the heating devices in real time. Numerical simulation results verify that the proposed energy management method can achieve a lower cost while the dynamics of temperature is fully addressed.