Impact of source variability on flexibility for demand response

This paper assesses the quality of the services provided for demand response by analysing the results of experimental work activating flexible sources in buildings, while evaluating the impacts on occupant comfort and extending the dataset through aggregation, to quantify the uncertainty for multiple systems. Power and energy flexibility is an integral part of the solution to address the challenge of grid balancing with increased renewable generation integration. However, the variability of the provided flexibility, as measured by the stability and consistency of load reduction or increase, may vary widely. To address this, the concept of quality of flexibility is introduced and analysed through the results of experiments conducted at a case study building to activate three sources of flexibility: heat pumps, Air Handling Unit fans and battery storage. The results show that fan data exhibits low uncertainty, suitable for ancillary services, whereas heat pumps' volatility is large. Standard error for heat pumps was within the quality threshold of 10 %, appropriate for energy services. Aggregation of multiple systems through the creation of a semi-synthetic dataset decreased the uncertainty for hourly energy services to as low as 2 %. For all cases, the impact on occupant comfort was not found to be significant. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

This paper evaluates the quality of demand response services, quantifies uncertainty for multiple systems, and assesses the variability of flexibility provided by different sources. The study found that aggregation of data reduced uncertainty for energy services and introduced the concept of flexibility quality, highlighting the differences in flexibility provided by various sources. Overall, the impact on occupant comfort was minimal.