Hierarchical Decentralized Control of Multiple Facilities for District Heating System using Virtual Prices

Thermal energy is necessary for a comfortable human life, as well as electricity. For economical operation, it is important to share thermal energy among other buildings or areas. An Energy Management System (EMS) is needed to maintain the balance between supply and demand. The decentralized control methods for EMS are suitable due to computational load and data privacy concerns. We previously considered a hierarchical decentralized control method for a virtual power plant supplying electricity. In this paper, we apply this method to thermal energy management, focusing on district heating systems (DHS). We assume that the DHS consists of multiple buildings. Each building contains several pieces of equipment: water heater, hot water consumption units (e. g., shower or faucet) and hot water storage tank. We propose a decentralized control method for multiple buildings and their equipment using real-time pricing strategy. Additionally, we modify our method to account for heat loss during hot water sharing. We evaluate our proposed method through numerical simulations using two case studies.