Building as a Power Plant: The use of buildings to provide demand response

The aim of the proposed feasibility study is to evaluate the potential for buildings to provide demand response to electrical networks.

Demand response is a way of managing grid constraints. This work is relevant to the UK's electricity system, since greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets are expected to result in greater use of renewables and greater electricity demand (through electrification of heat and transport loads), both of which impact on the way the electricity grid will operate in the future. The UK Government wishes to support flexibility in the electricity system, and recently requested evidence to support the development of greater flexibility.

Demand response programs typically involve very large demand centres, co-ordinated by National Grid. In this instance we are interested in much smaller loads (which could be grouped together), which could offer services to the local Distribution Network Operator. Buildings can provide significant Demand Side Response capabilities given the nature of the thermal and electrical properties of buildings. This may be particularly useful in urban areas, where the electricity grid may be under greater strain in the future.

Buildings could operate individually, or coordinate with other sites and assets in urban areas to form a Virtual Power Plant.

The building we propose to study is the Urban Sciences Building. The Urban Sciences Building is located on Science Central, a 24-acre physical site being developed in partnership between Newcastle University and Newcastle City Council to provide a smart, sustainable, resilient city which links energy, transport and digital infrastructure in an urban context. The building will be a unique environment and a 'living' laboratory. The Urban Sciences Building is equipped with hundreds of sensors that can measure energy supply and demand. The building incorporates photovoltaic generation and large scale grid-connected battery storage. These two technologies can respond to local network needs for services (e.g. peak-shaving), and also act as a power source for the building in case of loss of mains power (i.e. islanded operation). The building is therefore ideal to study, due to the types of load and generation in the building. The site is also ideal to study, since the network is instrumented and other loads are close by.

The academic team has the necessary skills to deliver the proposed programme of work, since the team has research expertise in buildings, electrical networks and storage. The team also benefit from collaboration with a number of industrial partners, who bring commercial expertise in similar fields. This ensures that project team are aware of the needs of a range of parties including:

Building designers (Hawkins Brown, Buro Happold, NG Bailey)
Building constructors (Bower and Kirkjland)
Building operators (Newcastle University Estates department)
Building Energy Management System provider (Siemens)
Distribution Network Operator (Northern Powergrid)
Site owner and developer (Newcastle City Council)
Site energy service provider (Engie)
Domestic property developer (Keepmoat)

These industry and public sector partners provide direction to the project team through an Advisory Board.

The Urban Sciences Building will be studied in detail, in order to analyse the size of load and generation, the speed of response available, and the potential duration of response. Once this analysis has been completed and the nature of Demand Side Response understood, we will then quantify the benefits for the local and wider networks and their operators. Operating the building to offer a Demand Side Response service will require changes to the management of the building. We will define the criteria for a new Building Energy Management System structure. We also plan to investigate the market barriers and enablers which affect the delivery of Demand Side Response by a single building, or groups of assets.

While modern building designs and energy management systems can support more rational and efficient energy use there is little consideration of how commercial and mixed-usage buildings can provide Demand Side Response and what the benefits from delivering these services can be. One of the main barriers for this is the lack of sufficient evidence, in the form case-studies, to quantify building capabilities and identify technically viable and cost-effective methods to achieve this. By implementing the proposed study on a fully-instrumented building the benefits of performing such operations for both the building owners and networks can be clearly identified. This will contribute significantly to the understanding of the role of such buildings to offer network services individually and in coordinated ways such as in the case of Virtual Power Plants and improve the overall landscape of Demand Side Response.

The potential for buildings to provide demand response to electrical networks is highly relevant to the following groups of industrial sectors:
- Building designers (architects, building mechanical heating and ventilation system designers, building constructors)
- Building operators
- Building management system and data management system designers
- Network operators
- Demand Side Response aggregators

and to the following groups of public sectors:
- Local authorities
- Social landlords

We will achieve this impact from a combination of approaches
- Engagement with a panel of key industrial and public participants supporting the project. This includes data exchange, collaborative working and provision of expertise on all WPs
- Representation of key stakeholders and end-users of the project outcomes in the project Advisory Board. All members are in a unique position to liaise with professional networks and dissemination channels regarding the outcomes of the project. The Advisory Board includes building designers and operators, management system developers, network operators and service aggregators who will be in a position to influence the outcomes based on their particular needs during the course of the project through a series of meetings. Participation of local authorities and social landlords in the Advisory Board also ensures high relevance and direct linking with societal needs.
- Research outputs will be reported in high quality, peer-reviewed journals and at subject-leading conferences including the IEEE PES General Meeting and CIRED. Academic publications are identified as deliverables, amounting to at least two papers. We envisage additional journal publications through collaboration with our international research network, although this is likely to be delivered beyond the end of the 18 month research project period.
- The proposed feasibility study and outcomes are highly complementary and strongly linked with the Centre for Energy Systems Integration led by Newcastle. The Centre comprises a cohort of national and international academic institutions and research centres including UKERC, NREL and EPRI. All of these organisation have a significant interest in Demand Side Response and in the concept of Virtual Power Plants. This network will be used as a means of communicating and disseminating project. The project outcomes will be immediately exploitable by the Centre supported by national and international policy makers including Ofgem and the Energy Systems Catapult outcomes and ideas. This will be achieved mainly via regular teleconferencing, and academic visits.
- The study will enable the implementation and demonstration of Demand Side Response capabilities in Science Central through follow on research/demonstration projects. This is an important potential for additional impact as the study can be followed with experimentation using the building and surrounding site. Stakeholders will therefore be in a position to directly implement and validate results of the work.