Advanced Energy Management to Effectively Utilize Buildings’ Renewable Energy Generation and Storage Capabilities

Inhalt:
This paper investigates a challenging problem that deals with the effective energy management of the onsite renewable energy sources (RES) and energy storage capabilities of buildings through an integrated coordinating network that can optimize the exploitation of the buildings’ generated and consumed energy. The proposed energy management method can be considered as the basis for the development of a building’s virtual power plant (BVPP) that can contribute to the reduction of the electricity cost of each building and enhance the grid stability as well as providing valuable grid services. This research focuses on energy storage sharing between buildings, comparing the economic performance of individually- owned versus community-owned energy storage systems. The goals of the BVPP are efficiency improvement and energy saving, optimal exploitation of the buildings’ equipment, improved utilization of energy within the BVPP, and thereby generating profits for the residents of the member buildings. An important characteristic of the new BVPP design is that it respects users’ preferences/habits and the autonomous character of the buildings. In this paper, the algorithmic model of the BVPP is described and several simulation results with MATLAB/Simulink program are presented to validate its effectiveness and feasibility.