Aggregation of Energy Flexibility of Commercial Buildings

Commercial buildings are increasingly utilised for providing demand side management due to their inherent thermal inertia and use of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning systems. For a given demand response event, the question arises for the building manager or demand response controller on how to optimally provide flexibility, given different efficiencies and associated costs with each strategy. Current approaches often focus only on individual strategies as opposed to total available flexibility. This paper examines various demand response strategies simulated in a case study commercial building using an EnergyPlus model for the summer design day. Modified indicators are proposed for the available electrical energy flexibility and associated efficiency and daily profiles are created for the individual strategies. The total energy flexibility is calculated as a daily profile and the results show that the building was found to provide close to 1000 kWh energy flexibility at its peak.