An Optimization Framework for a District Energy Management System

This paper presents a conceptual architecture of a District Energy Management System (DEMS) that monitors the district power consumption and optimizes the thermal power profile for the next day, by respecting the user’s comfort preferences and by minimizing the consumption. To this aim, a Particle Swarm Optimization application is proposed to pursue the objective of satisfying the comfort by using the minimum possible power imposed by the foreseen day-ahead DEMS profile. For each building of the district, the Building Energy Management System (BEMS) applies the optimized load profile by controlling the actuators and monitors the on-line power consumption and comfort. If the customer comfort cannot be guaranteed for unpredicted weather conditions during the day after, a new optimized power profile is provided by the DEMS.