Sixth working meeting

The sixth working meeting took place in Barcelona, Spain on March 26th-28th 2018. The meeting was attended by 53 participants from 14 countries. The meeting was hosted by IREC.

The main part of the meeting was used to focus on the Anne67 Deliverables. In total seven deliverables are planned and they are as follows:

D1 - Source Book: Principles of Energy Flexible Buildings summarizes the main findings of the Annex 67 and targets all interested in what Energy Flexibility in buildings is, how can it be controlled, and which services may it deliver.

D2 - Definition, indicators and methodology for characterization of Energy Flexibility in buildings presents the terminology around energy flexibility, the existing indicators used to evaluate the flexibility potential and their application in a common exercise conducted by Annex 67 participants.

D3 - How to characterize and label Energy Flexibility in Buildings introduces the Flexibility Index and Flexibility Function which are the first attempt to characterize and label energy flexibility.

D4 - Stakeholders’ perspectives on energy flexibility in buildings displays the view point of eight types of stakeholders towards the energy flexible buildings.

D5 - Control strategies and algorithms reviews based on the input from literature and case studies the applied and tested control strategies for energy flexibility in buildings

D6 - Test facilities presents the existing test facilities, describes the finalized and planned experiments related to energy flexibility and draws the recommendations for future testing activates.

D7 - Examples on how to obtain Energy Flexibility in buildings summarizes good examples of energy flexible buildings. 

During the meeting the methodology for characterization and labelling of Energy Flexibility in buildings and its test was further discussed. The methodology has 2 main goals: the identification of the flexibility function – which describes the available flexibility of a system as a transfer function relating penalty (input) to power (output) – and the flexibility index – which gives a more comprehensive insight into the impact of using energy flexibility in a certain context (e.g. energy savings, CO2 reduction). 

Finally, the Flexibility Characteristics can be derived from the Flexibility Function. The main outcome from the test was that the use of model predictive control for the direct simulation results in an anticipation of the control to the penalty step-change and the obtained Flexibility Characteristics are sensitive to the shape and timing of the step change.

Hence, when using the direct simulation approach, it comes down to define a good penalty function. Further research is needed to identify what are the prerequisite of the penalty signal since it will influence the flexibility estimation. As next steps for the common exercise, in support of the further development of the cookbook, is an intensive work-group planned in May 2018.