Systems and methods using decision analysis for controlling energy consumption and facilitating building participation in ancillary energy markets

Abstract

Building energy consumption is controlled by operating energy consumptive devices according to a control plan determined by: using a software building model to simulate building behavior over a simulation period in accordance with predicted circumstances and in accordance with multiple control plans; for at least one of the control plans, re-simulating building behavior a plurality of times each with a different perturbation imposed, with each perturbation corresponding to a different degree of participation in a grid market, to thereby determine an amount of participation in the grid market available to the building; resimulating building behavior a plurality of times imposing said determined participation amount as a constraint; and selecting an optimal control plan based on the last round of resimulations. The selected optimal control plan may also be derived through combining buildings or energy response attributes associated with different buildings to form synthetic resources for optimal deployment to the grid.