Real-time energy scheduling for smart hotels with dynamic temperature control in occupied and reserved rooms

Smart technologies play a pivotal role in improving energy efficiency and guest comfort in hotels. However, existing hotel energy scheduling models overlook the dynamic temperature requirements of reserved but temporarily unoccupied rooms and do not fully capture the complexity introduced by area-dependent load flexibility in real-time operation. To address these gaps, this paper proposes a real-time integrated electrical and thermal energy scheduling model for a smart hotel equipped with a multi-carrier energy system comprising electrical and gas networks, a combined cooling, heating, and power unit, and a steam boiler. Electrical and thermal loads in common areas and guest rooms are classified as time-flexible, power-flexible, and fixed, with their technical interactions represented through linking constraints. The principal novelty of the proposed energy management system is the coordinated dynamic temperature management of occupied rooms, reserved but temporarily unoccupied rooms, and common areas. This is achieved by explicitly modeling room occupancy transitions and the mutual dependency of temperature-regulating flexible loads, enabling realistic pre-conditioning of guest rooms while improving scheduling decisions. The proposed deterministic real-time optimization model jointly schedules energy resources and flexible loads to maximize operational profit while minimizing guest dissatisfaction, quantified using the discomfort degree-day metric, under uncertainties in outdoor temperature and room occupancy. Out-of-sample simulations under varying tourism and climatic conditions show that increasing the penalty on temperature deviations in occupied rooms eliminates dissatisfaction in summer and reduces it by 64.99% in fall. This increased priority for occupied-room comfort, however, raises dissatisfaction in reserved but temporarily unoccupied rooms by 65.29% and 9.37%, respectively, revealing the inherent trade-off between guest comfort and energy efficiency.