Building equipment with predictive control

A method for operating a heating ventilating or air conditioning (HVAC) system, the method comprising:

• obtaining a unit-specific objective function for a unit of HVAC equipment comprising a physical enclosure containing one or more powered HVAC components operable to perform a heating or cooling operation, wherein the unit-specific objective function excludes electric energy consumed by equipment outside the physical enclosure;
• performing an optimization of a unit-specific objective function for the unit of HVAC equipment to determine amounts of electric energy for the powered HVAC components to consume at a plurality of time steps during an optimization period;
• and
• operating the powered HVAC components to consume the amounts of electric energy determined by performing the optimization of the unit-specific objective function when performing the heating or cooling operation.