Atefe Makhmalbaf, Godfried Augenbroe
Year:
2015
Bibliographic info:
Building Simulation, 2015, Hyderabad, India

Buildings are the main consumers of electricity across the world. In the electricity system, it is critical to have a realistic forecast of buildings’ demand for adequate power planning and management. However, in the research and studies related to building performance assessment, the focus has been on evaluating energy efficiency of buildings whereas the instantaneous power consumption of systems has been overlooked. This paper argues that the power performance of buildings should be modelled and evaluated as a function of both electrical (e.g., voltage) and thermal characteristics of systems. This allows capturing reactive power in addition to active power and understanding how different motor types in buildings respond to electrical variations. The main objective of this paper is to estimate building’s load profile as a function of voltage variations coupled with thermal response of the building. Modelling power as a function of voltage enables studies related to cascading power failure due to excessive reactive power, conservation of voltage reduction (CVR) as a demand response method for demand side management, and uncertainty quantification in thermal energy calculated in absence of electrical variations. Thermal-electrical models of buildings support more effective design, selection, and operation (i.e., control) of motor-driven building systems for energy and power conservation goals in addition to better planning and management of the electricity system. This paper presents different scenarios that show the impact of voltage variations on peak load reduction depending on different motor types in building systems.