Including households’ comfort elasticities in model predictive controllers

To investigate whether the demand-supply energy balance can be maintained, models of residential energy flexibility are required. These models include model predictive controllers (MPCs) that utilize dwellings’ thermal mass as energy storage. However, the potential contribution of households themselves to this form of flexibility is frequently overlooked.

Therefore this paper integrates comfort elasticities (i.e. comfort adaptations in response to price changes) into an MPC, considering diverse ways in which they can be quantified. Applying this framework to a case, once with underfloor and once with convective heating, demonstrates that including comfort elasticities has the potential to reduce energy costs by 24 % in the scenario with convective heating and 20 % in the one with underfloor heating compared to a typical MPC. This observation underscores the importance of including them in simulation frameworks and home energy management systems.