Demand Side Flexibility Resources in Buildings: Characterization and Quantification

With the increasing proportion of intermittent renewable energy generation, the new power system is facing a significant challenge to maintain a real-time balance between supply and demand. The building sector, one of the major sectors on the demand side, has huge potential for energy flexibility, which contributes to the dynamic balance of the power grid. This paper discusses and classifies the common flexibility resources in or around buildings. The demand-responsive strategies of these flexible loads are characterized. Furthermore, an equivalent battery model is employed to quantify the flexibility capacity as virtual energy storage and contrast with traditional batteries. This paper can help better recognize the demand flexibility in buildings, deeply understand the flexible load characteristics, and provide comparable evaluation metrics of building flexibility resources with traditional energy storage.