A set of comprehensive indicators to assess energy flexibility: a case study for residential buildings

¹ School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin, 04V1W8, Ireland.
² Research Center for Sustainable Energy Technologies, Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences, 70174, Stuttgart, Germany.
³ UCD Energy Institute, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin, 04V1W8, Ireland.

^* Corresponding author: francesco.dettorre@ucdconnect.ie

Abstract

The increasing share of renewable energy sources in the power industry poses challenges for grid management due to the stochastic nature of their production. Besides the traditional supplyside regulation, grid flexibility can also be provided by the demand side. Demand-Response is an attractive approach based on adapting user demand profiles to match grid supply constraints. Nevertheless, defining the flexibility potential related to buildings is not straightforward and continues to pose challenges. Commonly accepted and standardized indicators for quantifying flexibility are still missing. The present paper proposes a new quantification methodology to assess the energy flexibility of a residential building. A set of comprehensive indicators capturing three key elements of building energy flexibility for demand response, notably, capacity, change in power consumption and cost of the demand response action have been identified. The proposed methodology is applied to a residential building, whose heating system is controlled by means of a model predictive control algorithm. The building model is developed on the basis of the experimental data collected in the framework of a European Commission supported H2020 research project Sim4Blocks, which deals with the implementation of demand response in building clusters. The optimal control problem has been investigated by means of mixed-integer linear programming approach. Real time prices are considered as external signals from the grid driving the DR actions. Results show that the proposed indicators, presented in the form of daily performance maps, allow to effectively assess the energy flexibility potential through its main dimensions and can be easily used either by an end-user or a grid-operator perspective to identify day by day the best DR action to be implemented.