Optimal energy management for the residential MES

Abstract

Nowadays, with the development of distributed energy resource (DER) technologies, various DERs would be widely applied to residential houses. By integrating electricity, thermal energy, natural gas, and other forms of energy into residential sectors, it provides an opportunity for energy users to exploit the complementarity of multi-energy resources. However, it is also a formidable challenge for users to manage such a multi-energy system (MES) designed for residential houses. The authors propose an integrated architecture for residential MES incorporating multi-energy resources, such as electricity, thermal energy, natural gas, and renewable energy. Besides, an optimisation model for MES is developed for coordinating energy generation, storage and consumption devices, and minimise energy cost under time-varying pricings. Additionally, the thermal comfort level is considered. An International Organization of Standard for the thermal comfort model is employed to precisely estimate and maintain residents' thermal comfort. The interaction among multiple energies is investigated via the model. The results show that the proposed model can offer significant cost-saving while maintaining user comfort through optimal scheduling of household devices and management of multi-energy sources.