Demand response in blocks of buildings: opportunities and requirements

Abstract

Increased Demand Response (DR) is essential to fully exploit European power systems, which in turn is an absolute prerequisite for meeting European targets related to energy efficiency and climate change. Essentially DR involves consumers reducing or shifting their electricity usage during periods of peak electricity demand in response to time-based tariffs or other forms of financial incentives. The opportunities for realising demand response vary across Europe as they are dependent on the particular regulatory, market and technical contexts in different European counties. Nevertheless successful DR programs are becoming increasingly common for large industrial customers. However DR programs aimed at small and medium scale customers have mostly failed to meet their expected potential. Blocks of buildings offer more flexibility in the timing of energy use, local energy generation and energy storage than single buildings and as such researchers and the energy industry are beginning to consider how blocks of buildings can operate collectively within energy networks to enhance the effectiveness of DR programs. This paper identifies the opportunities and technical, market and regulatory requirements for

Demand Response: Moving beyond the Technical and Physical Context of Buildings

“…The DR-BOB solution has been piloted at four demonstration sites: two university campuses (one in Middlesbrough in the UK and one in Cluj Napoca in Romania), a business park in Anglet (Technology campus Anglet) in France, and a private hospital in Brescia in Italy. With local variations in the exact organisation of the elements, the technical part includes the following elements [1]:…”

Demand Response Technology Readiness Levels for Energy Management in Blocks of Buildings

“…The DR-BoB project aims to provide and validate a method of assessing levels of technology readiness related to the technologies required for consumers' facilities managers, buildings and the local energy infrastructure to participate in the DR energy management solution at any given site [8]. Currently the following four technology readiness levels are defined:…”

“…The degree to which the DR-BoB energy management solution can increase the ability of any given site to participate in DR is dependent upon the pre-existing energy systems, i.e., the energy metering, telemetry and control systems, and local power generation and storage plant [8]. The value proposition for the DR-BoB solution is obviously dependent on the available revenue sources, which are discussed in detail elsewhere [9].…”

“…As such, current work is considering how blocks of buildings can operate collectively to provide DR within energy networks [8,9]. However, metering instrumentation, automation/control and information/communication technologies tools are a pre-requisite of participation in many DR services requiring guaranteed and fast response from commercial buildings [8][9][10][11].…”

“…However, even in the short term operating reserve (STOR) programme, the largest explicit turn-down DR programme in the UK, 85% of assets are found to respond within 10 min despite a nominal 4 hour response time [11]. To enable the exploitation of the potential flexibility in the timing and use of energy in blocks of buildings, an ongoing innovation project called Demand Response in Blocks of Buildings (DR-BoB) has upgraded existing technologies and integrated them into a scalable cloud-based solution for DR in blocks of buildings [8]. The solution is being piloted at four sites in France, Italy, Romania and the UK.…”