Energy-Efficient Buildings Facilitated by Microgrid

Recent research shows that 20%-30% of building energy consumption can be saved through optimized operation and management without changing the building structure and the hardware configuration of the energy supply system. Therefore, there is a huge potential for building energy savings through efficient operation. Microgrid technology provides an opportunity and a desirable infrastructure for improving the efficiency of energy consumption in buildings. The key to improve building energy efficiency in operation is to coordinate and optimize the operation of various energy sources and loads. In this paper, the scheduling problem of building energy supplies is considered with the practical background of a low energy building. The objective function is to minimize the overall cost of electricity and natural gas for a building operation over a time horizon while satisfying the energy balance and complicated operating constraints of individual energy supply equipment and devices. The uncertainties are captured and their impact is analyzed by the scenario tree method. Numerical testing is performed with the data of the pilot low energy building. The testing results show that significant energy cost savings can be achieved through integrated scheduling and control of various building energy supply sources. It is very important to fully utilize solar energy and optimize the operation of electrical storage. It is also shown that precooling is a simple way to achieve energy savings.