Experimental Demonstration of Frequency Regulation by Commercial Buildings - Part I: Modeling and Hierarchical Control Design

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how commercial buildings can participate in frequency regulation through a hierarchical control system, including modeling, robust optimization, and predictive control, validated through experimental results.

Contribution

It introduces a hierarchical control framework for frequency regulation in commercial buildings, combining robust optimization and model predictive control, validated with experimental data.

Findings

Successful modeling and control tuning for frequency regulation

Hierarchical controller achieves stable and fast responses

Experimental validation of control approach in real building

Abstract

This paper is the first part of a two-part series in which we present results from an experimental demonstration of frequency regulation in a commercial building test facility. In Part I, we introduce the test facility and develop relevant building models. Furthermore, we design a hierarchical controller that consists of three levels: a reserve scheduler, a building climate controller, and a fan speed controller for frequency regulation. We formulate the reserve scheduler as a robust optimization problem and introduce several approximations to reduce its complexity. The building climate controller is comprised of a robust model predictive controller and a Kalman filter. The frequency regulation controller consists of a feedback and a feedforward loop, provides fast responses, and is stable. Part I presents building model identification and controller tuning results, whereas Part II reports results from the operation of the hierarchical controller under frequency regulation.