2014 - 2019
finished

IEA EBC-Annex 67

Project: Energy-Flexible Buildings (IEA EBC-Annex 67)
Funding: Agreement
IREC Role: Partner
Main IREC Group: Thermal Energy and Building Performance, Thibault Péan
Other PI: Jaume Salom

Overview

Energy flexibility in buildings will play an important role in facilitating energy systems based entirely on renewable energy sources. Flexibility is necessary to control the energy use to match the actual energy generation from various energy sources such as solar and wind power. However, before this project there was a lack of comprehensive knowledge about how much energy flexibility different building types and their usage may be able to offer to the future energy systems.

This project has demonstrated how energy flexibility in buildings can provide generating capacity for energy grids, and has identifed critical aspects and possible solutions to manage such flexibility. This knowledge is important in order to incorporate energy flexibility of buildings into future smart energy systems and to better accommodate renewable sources in energy systems. It is also important when developing the business case for using building energy flexibility within future systems to potentially reduce costly upgrades of energy distribution grids.