Model analysis of a residential building for demand response

This paper focuses on developing a thermal model in MATLAB that considers both thermal resistance and capacitance in building envelope, using the same assumptions in a building energy simulation tool EnergyPlus to compare the indoor temperature changes between these two, implementing the residential model to find optimal solution for air-conditioning system in smart home energy management systems (SHEMS). The conventional model which is routinely used in the available literature on demand response and home energy management usually neglects the dynamics of a second-order system due to the thermal mass of the house. As a consequence, the energy demand based on the conventional model may be over evaluated. A detailed single family house model was developed using EnergyPlus and the simulation result generated from MATLAB model was compared with the outcome from EnergyPlus. The study shows solar radiation can change the thermal behavior at a noticeable level. Such a less complex model is more amenable to study the effect of thermal inertia in demand response, hence will make the optimization results for scheduling and coordinating distributed energy resources in home energy management more realistic.