The Bridge - Issue 3, 2020 - 17

THE FUTURE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY CONSUMPTION:

Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings
Nikitha Radhakrishnan, Erika Gupta, Karma Sawyer, and Monica Neukomm

In the more than 100-year existence of the
electric power grid, operators focused control
on the supply of electricity, not the demand.
Supply-side entities like utilities, grid operators,
and large power plants match services to meet
electricity demand. However, given growing
peak electricity demand, transmission and
distribution infrastructure constraints, and an
increasing share of variable renewable electricity
generation on the power grid [1, 2], there is
rising interest in leveraging flexible demand-side
entities to balance the demand with supply
at different timescales and avoid transmission
and capacity constraints. Flexibility in distributed
energy resources (DERs)-such as customerowned solar generation, battery storage, energy
efficiency, and demand response-will be
crucial in alleviating stresses on the grid and
maintaining its resilience.
Buildings offer a unique opportunity for cost-effective
demand-side management because they are the
nation's primary users of electricity. They consume
75% of all U.S. generated electricity and drive a
similar fraction of peak power demand [1]. The
electricity demand from buildings results from a variety

of electrical loads such as heating, ventilation, air
conditioning (HVAC); lighting; and appliances serving
occupant needs. However, many of these loads are
flexible to some degree. Energy efficiency and demand
response are the two most common demand-side
resources deployed today to provide benefits to
building owners, occupants, and the grid. Demand
response is realized by leveraging a building's demand
flexibility, characterized by active load management on
timescales consistent with utility system and grid needs.
Demand flexibility is the technical capability associated
with a building, to actively lower, increase, shift, or
modulate energy usage in response to utility grid
needs, compared to a baseline scenario reflecting the
passive state of operation. For example, preconditioning
building spaces can shift energy use away from more
expensive peak hours. The thermal mass of a building's
physical structure-parts made of steel, concrete, and
masonry-have thermal inertia. It allows a building to
deploy precooling or preheating strategies to shift HVAC
energy loads to off-peak periods while maintaining
comfortable temperature ranges for occupants.
Research, led by the U.S. Department of Energy
Building Technologies Office (BTO), helps buildings
become smarter about the amount and timing
of energy use through the Grid-Interactive
Efficient Buildings (GEB) Initiative.

HKN.ORG

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https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/50229/1/paper0342.pdf https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/50229/1/paper0342.pdf https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8631190 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8631190 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8673636 https://hkn.ieee.org/ https://hkn.ieee.org/

The Bridge - Issue 3, 2020

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