Controlling an hvac system in association with a demand-response event

An intelligent network-connected thermostat for controlling an operation of an HVAC system in a smart home environment, the thermostat comprising:

• HVAC control circuitry operable to actuate one or more elements of the HVAC system;
• one or more sensors for measuring characteristics of the smart home environment;
• and
• a processor coupled to the HVAC control circuitry and the one or more sensors and operable to cause the thermostat to perform operations including:
• identifying a DR event that defines a DR event period;
• determining an optimized control trajectory of an HVAC system to be in effect during the DR event period that minimizes a cost function comprising a combination of:
• a first factor representative of a total energy consumption during the DR event period;
• a second factor representative of a metric of occupant discomfort;
• and
• a third factor representative of deviations of a rate of energy consumption over the DR event period;
• and
• controlling the HVAC system in accordance with the determined optimized control trajectory.

A tangible non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by a computer processor, cause the computer processor to perform operations including:

• identifying a DR event that defines a DR event period;
• determining an optimized control trajectory of a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system to be in effect during the DR event period that minimizes a cost function comprising a combination of:
• a first factor representative of a total energy consumption during the DR event period;
• a second factor representative of a metric of occupant discomfort;
• and
• a third factor representative of deviations of a rate of energy consumption over the DR event period;
• and
• controlling the HVAC system in accordance with the determined optimized control trajectory.