Home energy management system for smart buildings with inverter-based air conditioning system

This paper presents a new model for the self-scheduling problem using a home energy management system (HEMS), considering the presence of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and an air conditioner (AC). The AC used in this study utilizes an inverter for controlling the temperature. The proposed model adopts the time-of-use (TOU) tariff for electricity, and minimization of the daily bill is the main objective of the proposed model. In the proposed model, there are some fixed and flexible loads, and optimal scheduling of the home appliances is modeled as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem to achieve the minimum daily bill. The HEMS in this paper incorporates a PV system, combined with the electrical energy storage (EES) system to deal with the uncertain solar power generation as well as optimally serving the loads during the peak hours, taking into account the charging and discharging control strategy of the installed EES. The indoor temperature can be held within a predefined margin and the settings of the AC system may be obtained according to the indoor-outdoor temperature model, which has been presented in this paper. During peak hours, the contribution of the AC in energy consumption to the daily bill is considerable. Therefore, optimal operation of the AC and other home appliances can effectively reduce the energy consumption and consequently, will result in reduced bills.