A Comparison of Direct and Indirect Flexibilities on the Self-Consumption of an Office Building: The Case of Predis-MHI, a Smart Office Building

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a method for assessing the impact of direct and indirect flexibilities on the self-consumption of office buildings. The goal is to assess how both the human actors and technical interventions can affect or mitigate deviations in the self-consumption level of a building from its optimal. This paper considers the Predis-MHi platform (a living lab) as a representative case study and applies a Mixed Integer Linear Programming optimization to manage both the direct (stationary battery charging) and indirect flexibilities (Electric Vehicle charging when users plug and unplug their vehicles). Our results indicate that the potential for a building’s self-consumption improvement using indirect flexibilities does exist and can be quantified. However, this type of flexibility is highly dependent on human actors which presents a high level of uncertainty and is difficult to account for in all stages of a building’s development and use. Direct flexibilities such as stationary battery storage can be used to mitigate the undesired effects of having significant levels of indirect flexibilities on a tertiary sector building’s energy performance. The results from this study could potentially be modeled into an indicator, which would serve to influence occupant behavior towards a desired optimal.

Optimal Scheduling of Controllable Resources in Energy Communities: An Overview of the Optimization Approaches

“…Linear Programming [13,27,28,34] Mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) [9][10][11][12]14,16,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]29,32,33,[35][36][37][38] Nonlinear programming (NLP) [15] 4.2.1. Linear Programming (LP)…”

“…Ref. [19] evaluated the impact of indirect flexibility that depended on human behavior modeled a the battery of EVs and direct flexibility devices such as stationary energy batteries on the energy performance of buildings and ECs. The optimization had a horizon of 24 h and a time step of 1 h. The case study was the Predis-MHI platform, which is a living laboratory for teaching and investigation activities in the Presqu'île district of Grenoble in France.…”

“…In [19], indirect flexibility devices (electric vehicle battery), as in [28], and direct flexibility services (stationary BESS) were addressed. The study contributed to the evaluation of the impact of indirect flexibility on the self-consumption of office buildings and a method to introduce indirect flexibility into the energy management system of a building.…”

Realistic Nudging through ICT Pipelines to Help Improve Energy Self-Consumption for Management in Energy Communities

“…There are two ways to improve consumption-production alignment in a building: direct and indirect flexibilities [4]. The first one refers to the automated activation or deactivation of electrical appliances through the addition of hardware and software in the consumption loop.…”

“…Arguably, the latter is more cost friendly and energy friendly, as it does not require the addition of equipment in the building. Moreover, it is efficient: Twum-Duah et al [4] estimate that self-consumption could be improved by as much as 9% in the case of a smart building, where users can reload their electrical vehicles. And Shadid [5] estimates that the intervention of nudge signal results in approximately 18% energy conservation during the orange periods when people are nudged not to consume.…”