The document summarizes a research paper that investigates energy scheduling for a household with solar assisted heating, ventilation, air conditioning and water heating systems. The objective is to minimize electricity costs while maintaining user comfort, taking into account different load types, thermal dynamics, and uncertainty in electricity prices and solar energy. The proposed design aims to flexibly use energy from solar or the grid during low-price periods to power home hot water and indoor temperatures, while reducing costs. Numerical results show the design achieves significant cost savings and allows balancing user comfort and costs, efficiently adjusting electricity load profiles. The analysis examines impacts of thermal system factors and weather conditions on achievable costs.

1. ENERGY MANAGEMENT FOR HOUSEHOLDS WITH SOLAR ASSISTED THERMAL
LOAD CONSIDERING RENEWABLE ENERGY AND PRICE UNCERTAINTY
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we investigate the energy scheduling problem for a household equipped
with a solar assisted heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, and water heating system in the
real-time pricing environment. Our objective is to minimize the electricity cost while
maintaining user’s thermal comfort requirements. We consider different types of loads with
different characteristics, detailed modeling of thermal dynamics, and uncertainty in electricity
price and solar energy. The advantage of the proposed design lies in the exploitation of the solar
assisted thermal system that can flexibly utilize the energy from the solar source or from the grid
during low-price periods to support the home hot water demand, user thermal indoor temperature
preference while reducing the electricity cost. We present numerical results to illustrate the
effectiveness of our proposed design. Specifically, we show that the proposed design can achieve
significant cost saving, allow flexible tradeoff between user comfort tolerance and electricity
cost reduction, and efficiently adjust the electricity consumption load profile. We also analyze
the influence of solar assisted thermal system factors such as the water tank temperature limit,
solar collector size, and weather condition on the achievable cost.