A predictive real-time Energy Management System (EMS) is proposed which improves PV self-consumption and operating costs using a novel rule-based battery scheduling algorithm. The proposed EMS uses the day-ahead demand and PV generation forecasting to determine the best battery scheduling for the next day. The proposed method optimizes the use of the battery storage and extends battery lifetime by only storing the required energy by considering the forecasted day-ahead energy at peak time. The proposed EMS has been implemented in MATLAB software and using Active Office Building on the Swansea University campus as a case study. Results are compared with published state-of-the-arts algorithms to demonstrate its effectiveness. Results show a saving of 15% and 30% in total energy cost over six months compared to a forecast-based EMS and to a conventional EMS, respectively. Furthermore, a reduction of 54% in the net energy exchanged with the utility by avoiding the unnecessary charge/discharge cycles.

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