Building energy flexibility: modeling and optimization

Demand flexibility has been highlighted as a distributed resource showing great promise at the level of the end-user to provide grid support services and is an emerging strategy allowing more active engagement of the demand side in the operation and control of electrical power systems. Buildings can provide different levels of energy flexibility depending on the nature of the energy flexible systems used. How to appropriately model and optimize energy flexible systems is essential to providing cost-effective solutions for building energy management. This chapter will first introduce the main simulation methods, including traditional building performance simulation methods and emerging data-driven modeling methods. How to use these methods to appropriately simulate building energy flexibility will be discussed. An optimization process is generally required to determine and size the cost-effective energy flexible systems in order to meet different levels of energy flexibility with different capital costs. Therefore, both single-objective and multiobjective optimization methods used to determine cost-effective energy flexible solutions to support demand-side management and grid optimization will be introduced and their pros and cons will be discussed. © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.