Energy Efficiency Improvement Through MPC-Based Management of EWHs in Collective Dwellings

The increasing use of photovoltaics (PV) in the residential sector aims at contributing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, one issue that slows down the adoption of the technology is the “duck curve” issue. A promising solution for addressing this issue is to use electric water heaters (EWHs) as a means of storing the PV power generation surplus – in buildings equipped with PV solar panels, a big part of the electricity produced is often not consumed locally – while preserving users' comfort. The primary goal of this research work encompass the development of hierarchical and distributed control strategies for EWHs in collective dwellings. These strategies bring together allocators of the PV power generation and model-based predictive controllers (MPCs). These strategies outperform the reference strategy, which is rule-based, in particular regarding the PV power generation self-consumption (SC) rate and the economic gain.