@article{32579, author = {Evangelos Vrettos and Emre C Kara and Jason S MacDonald and Goran Andersson and Duncan S Callaway}, title = {Experimental Demonstration of Frequency Regulation by Commercial Buildingsā€”Part I: Modeling and Hierarchical Control Design}, abstract = {

This paper is the first part of a two-part series in which we present results from one of the first worldwide experimental demonstrations of frequency regulation in a commercial building test facility. We demonstrate that commercial buildings can track a frequency regulation signal with high accuracy and minimal occupant discomfort in a realistic environment. In addition, we show that buildings can determine the reserve capacity and baseline power a priori, and identify the optimal tradeoff between frequency regulation and energy efficiency. In part I, we introduce the test facility and develop relevant building models. Furthermore, we design a hierarchical controller for the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system that consists of three levels: 1) a reserve scheduler; 2) a building climate controller; and 3) 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. Specifically, we find out that with an appropriate formulation of the model identification problem, a two-state model is accurate enough for use in a reserve scheduler that runs day-ahead. In part II, we report results from the operation of the hierarchical controller under frequency regulation.

}, year = {2016}, journal = {IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid}, volume = {9}, pages = {3213 - 3223}, month = {11/2016}, issn = {1949-3053}, doi = {10.1109/TSG.2016.2628897}, language = {eng}, }