An open source smart building energy management platform through VOLTTRON

Buildings as one of the largest consumers of electricity in the grid have a large potential to participate in the grid operation. This paper represents a control and simulation test bed in VOLTTRON platform for building energy management. Several Control and simulation agents are designed for major consumers of electricity in buildings (Air conditioner, Electric Vehicle, Water Heater) considering grid signal, and occupant behavior. Simulator agents are capable of simulating multiple control scenarios simultaneously, and provide an estimation of different control performances using identified models in case of hardware implementation. Grid signal responsive controls, including model predictive control and transactional controls are implemented in control agents, and prediction from MPC is used to calculate future load of the building in a central management agent. Finally, performance and output of each controller, is visualized in a flexible graphical user interface.