EAGER: Collaborative Research: Empowering Smart Energy Communities: Connecting Buildings, People, and Power Grids

By 2050, a staggering 70% of the world’s population is projected to live and work in cities, and two-thirds of global primary energy consumption is attributed to cities, leading to 71% of global direct energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. Smart cities will consist of sustainable infrastructures with buildings as major constituents. Buildings’ energy consumption contributes to more than 70% of electricity usages, with people spending more than 90% of their time in buildings nowadays. Future cities with innovative, optimized building designs and operations have the auspicious potential to play a pivotal role in reducing energy consumption, curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and maintaining stable electric-grid operations. Buildings are physically connected to the electric power grid, thus it is an instinctive idea to understand the coupling of decisions and operations of the former two. However, at a community level, there is no holistic framework that buildings and power grids can simultaneously utilize to optimize their performance. In this project, a novel mathematical framework that fills the aforementioned knowledge gaps will be investigated, and the following hypothesis will be tested: Connected buildings, people, and grids will achieve significant energy savings and stable operation within a smart city.