Identifying The Variability and Influential Factors in Building Demand Flexibility

The Challenge: Understanding key influences in predicting and optimizing building demand flexibility performance

Building demand flexibility (DF) can help to decarbonize the buildings sector, improve grid reliability, and meet environmental and economic goals for buildings. In fact, building DF can be a more economical resource than other strategies, such as behind-the-meter batteries. However, building DF performance is subject to many factors that cannot be realistically isolated for analysis in the field. An improved understanding of these influential factors is critical for helping building owners identify optimal DF strategies and anticipate DF performance.

The Solution: FLEXLAB^®

The U.S. Department of Energy’s FLEXLAB® facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory sought to close this knowledge gap by conducting lab testing and research to develop a validated understanding of how key factors such as weather, building thermal mass, and HVAC system type may influence DF in real building systems as measured in predefined metrics.

The Bottom Line: FLEXLAB® tests were able to identify key factors influencing building DF

Testing conducted at FLEXLAB not only validated some of the researchers’ hypotheses but also revealed new findings such as how HVAC system type and thermal mass may influence building DF. The testing also provided a valuable calibration data source for simulation models and supported the building demand flexibility benchmarking framework, which can accommodate varying grid needs across geographic and time dimensions. Building aggregators, building portfolio owners, and utility program design professionals can use this research to support their business decisions.

Download the full case study here: Identifying The Variability and Influential Factors in Building Demand Flexibility