Conference Paper
Proceedings of BSA Conference 2024: Sixth Conference of IBPSA-Italy
ClustEnergy OpTool: An Open Tool for Assessing the Energy Flexibility Provided by Clusters of Buildings
ClustEnergy OpTool: An Open Tool for Assessing the Energy Flexibility Provided by Clusters of Buildings
Patricia Ercoli, Alice Mugnini, Fabio Polonara, Alessia ArteconiDOI: https://doi.org/10.13124/9788860462022_12Abstract: Over the past 25 years there has been a significant growth in final electricity consumption, and this is expected to increase due to greater electrification and continued integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RESs). This trend can lead to imbalances and sustained strains on power grids during surpluses and peak demand. To address these challenges, through flexible strategies, building thermal demand can be managed in response to the grid requirements. In this field, moving from the individual building level to the cluster level allows for a greater reserve of displaced energy for grid balancing. However, planning the flexible resources needed for energy management of clusters of buildings can still be difficult. Therefore, a tool to evaluate flexibility scenarios can be useful. Thus, the aim of this paper is to introduce ClustEnergy OpTool, an open tool for estimating the energy demand of a user-defined cluster of buildings under different demand management strategies. The user can compose the cluster by choosing from different building archetypes served by Heat Pumps (HPs) to meet the thermal demand for space heating, cooling and DHW. Buildings can be equipped with PV and subject to a given price signal. Then, by selecting different ways to flexible manage the cluster energy demand (e.g., peak-shaving or demand-shifting, price signal-based management), the tool can estimate the energy shifted, peak displacement, PV self-consumption and electricity bill reductions, both at cluster and individual building level. Pages: 85 - 94 Paper: