Multi-market demand response using economic model predictive control of space heating in residential buildings

Several studies have evaluated the potential for residential buildings participating in demand response programs based on the day-ahead electricity market prices. However, little is known about the benefits of residential buildings providing demand response by engaging in trading on the intraday market. This paper presents a simulation-based study of the performance of an economic model predictive control scheme used to enable demand response through parallel utilization of day-ahead market prices and intraday market trading. The performance of the control scheme was evaluated by simulating ten apartments in a residential building located in Denmark through a heating season (four months) using historical market data. The results showed that the addition of intraday trading to the more conventional day-ahead market price-based control problem increased the total cost savings from 2.9% to 5.6% in the existing buildings, and 13%-19% in retrofitted buildings with higher energy-efficiency. In the existing building the proposed control scheme traded on average 12.7 kWh/m2 on the intraday market throughout the simulation corresponding to 21% of the reference consumption. For a retrofitted building the traded volume was 9.6 kWh/m2 which corresponds to 52% of the reference consumption. These results suggest that the benefits of considering intraday market trading as a demand response incentive mechanism apply to a wide range of buildings.