Robustly Coordinated Bi-Level Energy Management of a Multi-Energy Building Under Multiple Uncertainties

This article proposes a robust building energy management system (BEMS) for facilitating multiple (thermal and electrical) energy flows in renewable energy sources (RES) integrated buildings. The proposed BEMS aims to optimally dispatch building components to counteract operational uncertainties encountered in real-time operation due to RES and electrical load. Owing to different response times of building components, BEMS has been time-decomposed into two timescales. In the longer timescale (hourly-ahead), fuel cell-based micro-combined cooling, heating and power unit, energy storage systems and thermal load control are dispatched, while in the shorter timescale (15-min ahead), battery energy storage is re-dispatched and electrical demand response is activated. Multi-timescale coordination is achieved through a bi-level optimization framework, where a two-stage robust optimization (TSRO) model optimizes system operation for realization of any level of uncertainty in the upper level. A recourse decision is computed by lower-level optimization during actual system operation. Extensive simulation results demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed scheme to robustly handle uncertainties while ensuring reliable operation and user-comfort.