MERLIN: Multi-agent offline and transfer learning for occupant-centric operation of grid-interactive communities

Kingsley Nweye, Siva Sankaranarayanan and Zoltan Nagy

Applied Energy, 2023, vol. 346, issue C, No S0306261923006876

Abstract: Building and power generation decarbonization present new challenges in electric grid reliability as a result of renewable energy source intermittency and increase in grid load caused by end-use electrification. To restore reliability, grid-interactive efficient buildings can provide grid flexibility services through demand response. Reinforcement learning is well-suited for energy management in grid-interactive efficient buildings as it is able to adapt to unique building characteristics compared to rule-based control and model predictive control. Yet, factors hindering the adoption of reinforcement learning in real-world applications include its sample inefficiency during training, control security and generalizability. Here we address these challenges by proposing the MERLIN framework for the training, evaluation, deployment and transfer of control policies for distributed energy resources in grid-interactive communities for different levels of data availability. We utilize a real-world community smart meter dataset to show that while independently trained battery control policies can learn unique occupant behavior and provide up to 60% performance improvement at the district level, transfer learning provides comparable building and district level performance while reducing training costs.

Keywords: Energy flexibility; Smart meter; Sustainability; Electrification; Building energy management; Demand response; Distributed energy resources; Energy simulation; Machine learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261923006876
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:346:y:2023:i:c:s0306261923006876

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.121323

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().