Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Learning-Based Demand Response in Grid Interactive Buildings via Gaussian Processes

Journal Article · · Electric Power Systems Research

This paper presents a predictive controller for a grid-interactive multi-zone building where the temperature dynamics are learned via Gaussian Process (GP) regression. We investigate the development of a learning-based predictive control with two main objectives: (i) continuously learn the temperature dynamics of the building based on data; and, (ii) use the learned dynamics to solve a multi-objective predictive control problem to guarantee occupants' comfort and energy efficiency during normal conditions and demand response events. We leverage the probabilistic non-parametric properties of GPs to estimate the (unknown) non-linear temperature dynamics of the building and to incorporate the uncertainty of those predictions in a multi-objective optimization problem. The GP-based predictive control is solved via a zero-order primal-dual projected-gradient algorithm. We evaluate numerically the performance of the proposed controller using a five-zone commercial building.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Building Technologies Office (EE-5B)
DOE Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
1882679
Report Number(s):
NREL/JA-5D00-83774; MainId:84547; UUID:7ce5d4d4-3e0f-43e8-abe0-9a3a73a4348d; MainAdminID:65136
Journal Information:
Electric Power Systems Research, Journal Name: Electric Power Systems Research Vol. 211
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (7)

Data-Driven Model Predictive Control with Regression Trees—An Application to Building Energy Management journal January 2018
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Joint Datacenter and HVAC Load Control in Distributed Mixed-Use Buildings journal July 2021
Gaussian process model predictive control of unknown non‐linear systems journal February 2017
Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning for HVAC Control in Commercial Buildings journal January 2021
Coordinating the operations of smart buildings in smart grids journal October 2018
A Primer on Zeroth-Order Optimization in Signal Processing and Machine Learning: Principals, Recent Advances, and Applications journal September 2020
All you need to know about model predictive control for buildings journal January 2020