Autonomous estimation of the energetic flexibility of buildings

Abstract

Growing shares of renewable intermittent energy in power grids together with changing energy consumption and price patterns increase the need for energetic flexibility to help balance the power grid. A variety of systems have been identified as being flexible in their electric energy prosumption. However, quantitatively describing the flexibility available from individual resources can be challenging, time-consuming, and costly. This paper shows how the energetic flexibility of domestic buildings and their heating systems can be estimated autonomously based only on energy meter data and outdoor air-temperature measurements. The fact that this approach requires only limited, readily available measurement data and can easily be automated makes it well-suited as an inexpensive and highly scalable tool to estimate the flexibility available from large populations of buildings.