States that optimal and automatic scheduling of electricity use in buildings under real-time pricing (RTP) requires integrated monitoring, computing and communications capabilities beyond the conventional present-day practice. Describes the general requirements of the RTP-based energy management system based on experience with the development and implementation of an RTP-based control system for storage heating and cooling in a number of commercial buildings. Describes the overall structure of the data logging/control system, data types, on-line interaction of data collection, storage and data processing and the way data are utilised in load prediction plus the optimisation of building response to RTP rates.

KEYWORDS: Buildings, electricity consumption, automatic, optimum, monitoring, calculating, cooling, energy management, offices, commercial, storage heating, energy storage, pricing