Contributions to ventilation system demand response: a case study of an educational building

¹ Smart City Center of Excellence, Tallinn University of Technology, 19086 Tallinn, Estonia
² Department of Electrical Power Engineering and Mechatronics, Tallinn University of Technology, 19086 Tallinn, Estonia
³ Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Tallinn University of Technology, 19086 Tallinn, Estonia

^* Corresponding author: vahur.maask@taltech.ee

Abstract

The increasing share of volatile renewable energy in the electricity grid increases the importance of load flexibility and Demand Response for balancing electricity supply with demand. Flexible loads in office buildings (e.g. educational buildings) are heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. This paper focuses on ventilation systems as flexible loads for providing ancillary services to the grid. A number of studies consider ventilation system control based only on demand or discuss possibilities of improving system performance. Previous studies provide little or no information about ventilation system flexibility, e.g. amount of power modulation, the rate of change, and the duration of how long the power level can be held. The described information is required by aggregators to provide load aggregation services for transmission system operators (TSO). This paper proposes a robust and model-free approach to estimate ventilation system flexibility according to CO₂ concentration in extracted air. The proposed approach includes power regulation boundaries for the ventilation system and duration estimation when operating at the selected boundary. A case study is conducted on a ventilation system, which services an auditorium of an educational building. The current paper analyzes the proposed robust approach for estimating ventilation system flexibility and compares estimation to measured results.