Bidding Strategies and Energy Management for Community power operators Incorporating Building Thermal Inertia

Increasing net profits and ensuring the comfort of the residents in community daily energy management is the primary mission of community power operators (CPOs). To reach these goals, the CPO may tailor a bidding strategy to pre-procure a portion of the cheaper power for the reservation to ensure a reliable power supply for scheduling programs. This paper develops a novel bi-level optimization model to resolve this challenge. In the upper level, the CPO aims to maximize net profits through customized power pre-procurement and real-time bi-directional power trading. The lower level focuses on minimizing the electricity costs of the buildings incorporating the building's thermal inertia depending on the real-time temperature variations. The proposed bi-level model presents an interdependent non-linear programming challenge. The instantiations indicate that setting different pre-order power levels for each time slot may improve net profitability for CPO.