Framework and Method to Define Flexible Loads in Buildings to Integrate as a Dynamic and Predictable Grid Resource

Lead Performer: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – Berkeley, CA Partner: Argonne National Laboratory – Argonne, IL

Buildings

March 4, 2019

Lead Performer: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – Berkeley, CA
Partner: Argonne National Laboratory – Argonne, IL
DOE Total Funding: $3,000,000
Project Term:  3 years
Funding Type: Lab Award

Project Objective

This project will use a variety of bottom-up techniques to create a new, consistent framework and methodology to characterize a building’s capacity to provide electrical services without exceeding the occupants’ minimal needs. This research, which focuses on non-battery storage technologies, will determine a building’s grid-resource flexibility based on factors including climate / weather, location, space types and operation history / status using simulation tools, field study results and FLEXLABTM calibration tests. Additionally, the project team will model occupants’ thermal acceptability thresholds of load shedding and demand response events to quantify the tradeoffs between flexibility from global temperature adjustments and discomfort risk. The project will use a mix of real building data and simulations to do the following:

  1. Identify which building end uses can provide flexibility and what is their contribution to the total building load
  2. Assess the impact of different building control strategies on the grid for loads that are controllable
  3. Characterize the consistency of resource availability using uncertainty analysis
  4. Propose a set of metrics to exchange information between the building and the grid about resource availability and to drive control algorithms

Project Impact

This project will – for the first time – establish a framework and method by which flexible building loads can be quantified as grid resources to enable planning on a regional level. It will help identify when and where building flexibility can provide grid services.

The project will improve understanding of ways in which buildings can act as flexible grid resources across building types and regions. This increased knowledge can improve energy efficiency (EE) and demand response (DR) systems integration, utility operational and planning activities driving potential impacts on energy use and improved grid reliability and resiliency. The project will create publicly available metrics and calculation procedures. Other researchers and industry stakeholders can use these for their own research, planning, and program and building design purposes. Building operators and controls vendors can use these metrics to help optimize building operations relative to providing grid services.

Contacts

DOE Technology Manager: Monica Neukomm
Lead Performer: Peter Schwartz, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory