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Project Description

Emerging digital and cyber-physical systems technologies are an integral component of grid interactive efficient buildings. Through advanced control and operation of building HVAC systems, these technologies support both energy efficiency and flexible demand objectives. Integrating state-of-the-art sensors and controls has the potential to save an estimated 29% of site energy consumption through high-performance sequencing of operations, optimizing settings based on occupancy patterns, and detecting and diagnosing inadequate equipment operation or installation problems. Furthermore, state-of-the-art sensors and controls can curtail or temporarily manage 10%–20% of commercial building peak load.

Smart, cloud-connected devices can also be orchestrated with grid system requirements and market signals using digital platforms, which aggregate and automatically dispatch the flexible demand capacity from thousands of buildings. This can provide a large resource of low-cost flexible demand (at around 20% of the cost of electrical batteries) to offset the amount of firming needed in future electricity grids powered by variable renewable generation sources. It can also enable buildings to respond to real time grid carbon intensity, so that buildings can take advantage of periods of high renewable energy production.

Counterfactually, without digitalisation, it would be impossible to achieve the necessary sector coupling required for unlocking flexibility as a scalable resource for accelerated transition to a low carbon society.

IEA EBC Annex 96 aims to help realise the vision of a reliable affordable clean electricity system, by utilising digitalisation to enable the aggregation of low-cost flexible demand from grid interactive efficient buildings, with a focus on flexibility from building HVAC loads. The objectives of this project are:

• Improving the value proposition, creating more certainty, and raising awareness for building owners;
• Providing technical, commercial, and institutional solutions for simple, trusted and low-cost exchange of data and information between relevant actors. This would put priority on privacy and cyber security, without creating a disproportionate technical and administrative burden for users;
• Agreeing on the technical requirements and information sharing requirements that need to be provided to electricity industry participants (for a given flexible demand asset) to enable participation in relevant electricity industry services/markets.

The project is structured into four work packages:

WP 1: Minimum Information Requirements;

WP 2: Flexible Demand Aggregation;

WP 3: Flexible Demand Product Packages; and

WP 4: Case Studies and Implementation Models.

IEA EBC Annex 96 expects to start the working phase in July 2025.

Project Summary