Control strategies for building energy systems to unlock demand side flexibility – A review

Conventional key performance indicators (KPI) assessed in building simulation lack specific measures of how the building interacts with the grid and its energy flexibility. This paper aims to provide an overview of specific energy flexibility performance indicators, together with supporting control strategies. If applied correctly, the indicators help improving the building performance in terms of energy flexibility and can enable minimization of operational energy costs. Price-based load shifting, self-generation and self-consumption are among the most commonly used performance indicators that quantify energy flexibility and grid interaction. It has been found that the majority of performance indicators, specific to energy flexibility, are combined with rule-based control. Only a limited amount of specific energy flexibility KPIs are used in combination with optimal control or model predictive control. Both of these advanced control approaches often have a couple of economic or comfort objectives that do not take into account an energy flexibility KPI. There is evidence that recent model predictive control approaches incorporate some aspects of building energy flexibility to minimize operational cost in conjunction with time varying pricing.