EFComf

Energy flexibility services from buildings by using adaptive comfort strategies

Publieke samenvatting / Public summary

Aanleiding
Providing energy flexibility from office buildings for (local) electricity grid services offers interesting (business) opportunities. The inherent flexibility of thermal mass can be exploited by using adaptive comfort control strategies. This project focuses on the energy flexibility that Dutch office buildings can offer by using such adaptive comfort control strategies.

Doelstelling
The goal of this project is to develop a tool that can predict the available energy flexibility that a specific Dutch office buildings can provide through their thermal mass and by using adaptive comfort control strategies. The tool predicts the energy flexibility potential, which can be used by an aggregator to identify the usefulness of the available flexibility for the balancing the market.

Korte omschrijving
BAM and TU/e will demonstrate the adaptive comfort control strategies (developed in an earlier project) in a living lab (building). The TU/e will use the measurements to develop and validate a building virtual test environment which is able to predict the energy flexibility that the building can offer/sell under varying occupant use and weather conditions. The virtual test environment will be based on a Building Energy Simulation tool in combination with a model-based controller. The predicted energy flexibility can be used by an aggregator to decide if he wants to use the offered flexibility in possible energy and service markets. The aggregator can group multiple buildings to create sufficient flexibility volume which can be complementary to other flexibility sources. The business case associated with the predicted building energy flexibility will be investigated.

Resultaat
The result is a tool that predicts the potential energy flexibility that a specific office building design can provide by using the adaptive comfort control strategies (without compromising thermal comfort). The tool compares the predicted energy flexibility to other available energy flexibility sources in the building. The tool can be used in the building design phase. Quantifying the potential energy flexibility of office buildings will fill a knowledge gap, and it is deemed to be a relevant step in the energy transition. Moreover, it will result in a better understanding about future business cases related to building energy flexibility.