Online Optimal Energy Management for Building Heating with Thermal Energy Storage

This paper studies the online optimal energy management problem for the building heating system. This system is driven by electric heat pumps, and equipped with the thermal energy storage (TES) that provides heat flexibility. The temporal coupling introduced by building temperature dynamics and TES energy level dynamics, together with the uncertainties of real-time electricity price and outdoor temperature, pose the optimal energy management problem a computationally challenging one. Hence, based on the Lyapunov optimization method, an online algorithm is proposed to minimize the long-term time average cost of heating system. Our algorithm can ensure the building temperature constraints and TES energy level constraints are satisfied all the time. The maximum optimality gap of our algorithm is also rigorously derived. Simulation results show that this algorithm can achieve user comfort and reduce energy cost effectively.