Abstract
This paper describes a supervisory control strategy for limiting peak power demand by small and medium commercial buildings while still meeting the business needs of the occupants. This control strategy has two features that make it relevant to new and existing buildings. First, it is designed to operate with building equipment, such as air conditioning and refrigeration systems, as they are presently installed in most small and medium commercial buildings. Because of this, the supervisory control could be realized as a software-only retrofit to existing building management systems. Second, the proposed control acts as a supervisory management layer over existing control systems, rather than replacing them outright. The primary idea of this approach is that the controls for individual building equipment request energy resources for a control action and the supervisory control examines the requests and decides which control actions to allow while satisfying a limit on peak power demand.
