Fast Demand Response for Building Clusters

This paper describes an approach for performing fast demand response involving a cluster of buildings. This approach is adaptive as well as distributed in nature. The approach is adaptive in the sense that the amount of targeted demand reduction, in an interval, is adjusted based on the performance of demand response actions executed in the last interval. The approach is distributed because the demand reduction is performed in each building in such a way that a global demand reduction target is met while the costs of performing the demand reduction actions are minimized. The developed method was implemented on a cluster of three buildings situated at U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO. The results show that the developed approach was able to meet the demand reduction target, which was based on the amount of actual load that were deemed controllable for the DR events.