Energy-aware thermal comfort-band maintenance scheduling under peak power constraint

Abstract

Peak energy consumption has impact on upfront capital costs and hence on energy tariffs. Reducing the size of the peaks has been recognized as an important consideration in the design of efficient demand-response systems. A substantial fraction of the energy demand of buildings comes from air-conditioners, refrigerators and room-heaters. These thermostatically controlled electrical devices (TCED) maintain the temperature of the environment under its control within a desired comfort-band. Based on the insight gained by empirical observations, this paper presents a technique, which is energy-aware in scheduling TCEDs for maintaining comfort-band when peak power constraint limits the number of devices that can run at a time.