Demand response (DR) is a set of demand-side activities aiming to reduce or shift electricity usage to improve the electric grid efficiency and reliability. Utilities or independent system operators (ISOs) often provide great incentives to encourage building users to reduce electricity usage through using various building operation and control strategies during occasional or emergency events. A compound control strategy is developed to provide a fast power demand reduction to the grid by shutting the chiller(s) down at the beginning of DR event. This strategy is compound with comprehensive utilization of passive and active storages and can provide accurate prediction of demand-shedding potential of buildings. Compared with conventional DR strategies, the developed strategy can provide much faster and stable demand shed under the specific demand reduction set-points. During the DR events, the indoor thermal comfort is improved with the use of application of small scale active storage. In addition, in order to reduce negative effects on the electrical grid, the post DR event spike in demand known as “rebound” can also be alleviated by using the active and passive storages.