Evaluation of methods for determining energy flexibility of buildings

Green Energy and Sustainability 2022;2(3):0006 | https://doi.org/10.47248/ges2202030006

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Evaluation of methods for determining energy flexibility of buildings

Georgios Chantzis ¹ , Panagiota Antoniadou ¹ , Maria Symeonidou ¹ , Elli Kyriaki ¹ , Effrosyni Giama ¹ , Symeon Oxyzidis ¹ , Dionysia Kolokotsa ² , Agis M. Papadopoulos ¹

1. Process Equipment Design Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GR 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
2. Laboratory of Energy Management in the Built Environment, Division of Environmental Management, Technical University of Crete, GR 73100 Chania, Crete, Greece

Correspondence: Georgios Chantzis

Academic Editor(s): Thomas Kotsopoulos, Georgios Martinopoulos, Giorgos Panaras

Received: Nov 4, 2021 | Accepted: Feb 21, 2022 | Published: Jul 4, 2022

This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from the 12th National Conference of IHT

Cite this article: Chantzis G, Antoniadou P, Symeonidou M, Kyriaki E, Giama E, Oxyzidis S, Kolokotsa D, Papadopoulos A. Evaluation of methods for determining energy flexibility of buildings. Green Energy Sustain 2022; 2(3):0006. https://doi.org/10.47248/ges2202030006

Abstract

The high rate of penetration of renewable energy sources leads to challenges in planning and controlling the production, transmission and distribution of energy. A possible solution lies within the change from traditional supply side management to demand side management. Buildings are good candidates for implementing a demand response model since they account for around 39% of global final energy use and are stably connected to all infrastructure networks. As a result, employing buildings as "players" in energy networks is considered now more than ever compelling. Recently, significant improvement has been denoted in the thermal efficiency of the building shell and the energy efficiency of the HVAC systems in new and renovated buildings. However, despite the reduction in energy demand regarding the space conditioning, buildings continue to be passive end users of the energy system. In order to ensure that they are capable of providing the necessary energy flexibility to balance intermittent energy production, a first step is to establish a formal, standard, and robust method of characterizing the energy flexibility provided on the demand side. Buildings can supply flexibility in a variety of ways, but there is currently no fixed and consistent method for quantifying the amount of flexibility a building can provide to future energy systems. In this paper, an overview of the literature on building energy flexibility will be offered, as well as an introduction to the concept of building energy flexibility and the methodologies used to define and evaluate it.

Keywords

Interactive buildings, Energy Flexibility, Demand Side Management (DSM), Building energy efficiency, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

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