Installation and Testing of a Two-Level Model Predictive Control Building Energy Management System

This article presents details of the installation and testing of a two-level control system for a building with rooftop photovoltaic (PV) and energy storage (ES). The proposed control system interacts with a system-level controller to manage real reactive building power consumption and PV ramp rate through the dynamic adjustment of building loads (BLs) (slower time-scale) in coordination with the charging and discharging of a battery ES system (ESS) (faster time-scale). A unique contribution of the control system compared with other techniques proposed in the literature is that through the real-time adjustment of the real and reactive building power trajectories by the system controller, the building can dynamically achieve different operational objectives such as energy efficiency, economic cost efficiency, demand response, and grid optimization. This article discusses: 1) the installation of rooftop PV generation and ES; 2) the implementation of a local control system to manage dispatchable BLs and ES; and 3) the results from system deployment in the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences (MSASS) building on the Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) campus in Cleveland, OH, USA. The performance of the two-level local control system for simultaneously managing net BL and PV ramp rate given the variability of PV generation is evaluated for different test scenarios, and the results demonstrate that the local control system performs as designed and required.