TA-23-C098 – Field Demonstration of Low-Cost and Scalable MPC at a K-12 School and Practical Challenges

There are more than 100,000 K-12 schools in the U.S., and they are the largest energy consumers in the public sector. Since the HVAC energy consumption accounts for the largest portion of the total energy use in K-12 schools, grid-interactive operation of their HVAC systems could lead to significant financial and environmental benefits to the grid as demand response and grid decarbonization resources. In addition, because of the unique sector of education, the grid-interactive operation could be beneficial for the future generation to learn about climate change. In this paper, we present a model predictive control (MPC) to enable this, and preliminary field test results at a school (in CA), and share practical challenges faced in the site implementation. Two buildings of the school, each of which is served by three RTUs, were tested in collaboration with our industry partner. Throughout the field demonstration, the MPC reduced 30% of the HVAC peak (or 25% of the building peak) demand for a cooling season. Also, it showed a 16% load-shifting potential of cooling load to a non-peak period.