Original title: User-specified Kelvin-hour budgets within model predictive control for energy-efficient buildings: Simulation and field demonstration
Jicheng Shi, Colin N. Jones · September 2026
Smart building controllers use predictions to save power while keeping rooms comfortable. Yet, surprise weather shifts and computer model errors can still push temperatures past set limits. Usually, people have to tune math penalty weights without knowing how much discomfort will happen. To fix this, researchers designed a controller that lets users set a clear budget for temperature slip-ups, measured in Kelvin-hours. A Kelvin-hour counts how far the temperature drifts from the goal and for how long. The system tracks whether it has extra budget or has overspent, and then shifts its future temperature limits step by step to stay on track. Tests showed the system cut energy by 31.9% while cutting temperature slip-ups by 36.2%. It also worked well across multiple rooms and in an actual lived-in home.
You are planning a week of meals with a strict grocery budget. Normally you try to stick to a fixed shopping list, but sometimes prices spike or guests arrive, forcing you to overspend. Now imagine you set a running weekly budget that allows some splurging as long as you average out. You keep a tally of how much you spent each day, and if you overspend one day, you cut back the next. In this paper, the building's temperature budget works the same way: you set an allowed level of discomfort (the Kelvin-hour budget), and the controller adjusts the temperature bounds to stay within that budget over time, saving energy when the budget allows.
Building operators can now directly control the trade-off between energy savings and comfort violations. Instead of guessing penalty weights, they set a clear Kelvin-hour budget. This makes energy-efficient control more predictable and customizable for real buildings.
The abstract doesn't say, but the method is validated only on two BOPTEST simulation cases and one residential deployment. It does not address extreme weather, computational costs, scalability to large buildings, or compare to alternative budget approaches. Further validation is needed.
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User-specified Kelvin-hour budgets within model predictive control for energy-efficient buildings: Simulation and field demonstration — Jicheng Shi, Colin N. Jones
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.