Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TABEDE (TowArds Building rEady for Demand rEsponse)
Reporting period: 2019-05-01 to 2021-04-30
To overcome the challenges imposed by climate change, the European Commission (EC) introduced the European Green Deal in 2019, ultimately targeting a net-zero emissions continent by 2050. Today, one-third of GHG emissions in the EU are attributed to its buildings. Demand response (DR) is a strategy that can support the EU's climate change goals for buildings. Through DR, customers can adjust their electricity consumption upwards or downwards in reaction to a financial incentive provided by the electric system operator. This can allow distribution system operators and end users to collaborate to shift consumption patterns to match periods of abundant renewable electricity supplies (RES), taking full advantage of carbon-free energy sources, decreasing GHG emissions, lowering energy bills, and reducing periods of peak demand.
To fully realize the European DR potential, buildings must expose all available flexibilities. However, several existing limitations need to be overcome:
• Interoperability and communication: A variety of communication technologies, protocols and data models are used in building automation and energy management systems and numerous smart grid standards exist.
• Cost: It is often cheaper to install a new BMS than to spend time and money to adapt an existing BMS.
• Functionality: Current BMSs do not support DR applications out of the box.
TABEDE aims to allowing all buildings to integrate energy grid DR schemes through a low cost extender for BMS systems or as standalone system, independent of communication standards and integrate innovative flexibility algorithms. A set of 4 specific objectives for the project were identified, which are summarized below along with the project-end conclusions of how TABEDE fulfilled these objectives.
• Objective 1: Develop an interoperable, DR-ready BMS extender that is compatible with at least 90% devices and systems. CONCLUSION: The TABEDE BMS-E connected to a wide range of devices, different BMSs, and sensors through diverse communication protocols at the 3 test sites, demonstrating the system’s high degree of interoperability
• Objective 2: Maximize building flexibility to improve DR capabilities up to a factor of 2. CONCLUSION: By connecting with devices and controlling them on a cost-optimized basis in response to grid signals, TABEDE exposed the flexibility within the 3 test sites and vastly improved their DR capabilities.
• Objective 3: Enable standards-based semantic exchange of information between secure web database of home appliances, and BMS and smart-grid—for seamless system integration. CONCLUSION: The TABEDE components effectively communicated with each other, individual devices, and existing BMSs using established semantic protocols.
• Objective 4: Demonstrate TABEDE technologies and functionalities through extensive simulation-based testing, and prove the feasibility of the proposed solutions through deployment on 3 test sites. CONCLUSION: TABEDE was demonstrated through on-site deployment at 3 buildings, as well as in a simulated neighborhood of 66 homes. Additionally, extensive simulation-based testing of TABEDE was conducted to complement the on-site deployments.
To fully realize the European DR potential, buildings must expose all available flexibilities. However, several existing limitations need to be overcome:
• Interoperability and communication: A variety of communication technologies, protocols and data models are used in building automation and energy management systems and numerous smart grid standards exist.
• Cost: It is often cheaper to install a new BMS than to spend time and money to adapt an existing BMS.
• Functionality: Current BMSs do not support DR applications out of the box.
TABEDE aims to allowing all buildings to integrate energy grid DR schemes through a low cost extender for BMS systems or as standalone system, independent of communication standards and integrate innovative flexibility algorithms. A set of 4 specific objectives for the project were identified, which are summarized below along with the project-end conclusions of how TABEDE fulfilled these objectives.
• Objective 1: Develop an interoperable, DR-ready BMS extender that is compatible with at least 90% devices and systems. CONCLUSION: The TABEDE BMS-E connected to a wide range of devices, different BMSs, and sensors through diverse communication protocols at the 3 test sites, demonstrating the system’s high degree of interoperability
• Objective 2: Maximize building flexibility to improve DR capabilities up to a factor of 2. CONCLUSION: By connecting with devices and controlling them on a cost-optimized basis in response to grid signals, TABEDE exposed the flexibility within the 3 test sites and vastly improved their DR capabilities.
• Objective 3: Enable standards-based semantic exchange of information between secure web database of home appliances, and BMS and smart-grid—for seamless system integration. CONCLUSION: The TABEDE components effectively communicated with each other, individual devices, and existing BMSs using established semantic protocols.
• Objective 4: Demonstrate TABEDE technologies and functionalities through extensive simulation-based testing, and prove the feasibility of the proposed solutions through deployment on 3 test sites. CONCLUSION: TABEDE was demonstrated through on-site deployment at 3 buildings, as well as in a simulated neighborhood of 66 homes. Additionally, extensive simulation-based testing of TABEDE was conducted to complement the on-site deployments.
The TABEDE project ran for 42 months, covering Oct 2017-April 2021. We summarize the work and results below, broken out by the two reporting periods (RP), with RP1 covering Oct 2017-April 2019 (M1-M18) and RP2 covering May 2019-April 2021 (M19-M42).
Activities carried out in the first period of the TABEDE project (M1-M18) can be summarized as follows:
• Based on state of the art review, definition and validation of the requirements and specifications that have to be met by the TABEDE platform;
• Development of the architectural design and the development of the BMS Extender and its integration into real environment;
• Development of the smart energy management components relative to the optimization components of the TABEDE solution;
• Development of the TABEDE simulation environment;
• Test site preparation for UK, IT & FR ;
• Launch of the stakeholder community.
The second period of TABEDE (M19-M42) was focused on validation and dissemination. Specifically:
• Use cases, metrics, KPIs, and analytical methods were developed to calculate TABEDE's impacts at the test sites and simulation environment.
• TABEDE was deployed and impacts measured at 3 test sites, complemented by 9 off-line simulations. Together, these deployments showed energy cost savings between 1% and 33%; and increased PV self-utilization between 3% and 35%.
• The simulation environment was fully defined and significant modelling conducted to evaluate TABEDE's impacts when deployed at neighborhood scale. Results from our modelling showed that up to 33% of the district’s electricity consumption could be made flexible following TABEDE installation. With this flexibility exposed, TABEDE enabled increased PV self-utilization across a range of scenarios, topping out at 51%.
• TABEDE exploitation plans and business models were defined to drive adoption of the solution. In total, six Key Exploitable Results were identified, with exploitation plans developed for each. A broader market and regulatory analysis was conducted to understand the barriers and drivers to TABEDE adoption.
• Significant dissemination activities took place to raise awareness about TABEDE's efforts. In total, 8 conference papers and 4 journal papers were submitted, 7 workshops/events were held, and a stakeholder community of close to 400 individuals was organized.
Activities carried out in the first period of the TABEDE project (M1-M18) can be summarized as follows:
• Based on state of the art review, definition and validation of the requirements and specifications that have to be met by the TABEDE platform;
• Development of the architectural design and the development of the BMS Extender and its integration into real environment;
• Development of the smart energy management components relative to the optimization components of the TABEDE solution;
• Development of the TABEDE simulation environment;
• Test site preparation for UK, IT & FR ;
• Launch of the stakeholder community.
The second period of TABEDE (M19-M42) was focused on validation and dissemination. Specifically:
• Use cases, metrics, KPIs, and analytical methods were developed to calculate TABEDE's impacts at the test sites and simulation environment.
• TABEDE was deployed and impacts measured at 3 test sites, complemented by 9 off-line simulations. Together, these deployments showed energy cost savings between 1% and 33%; and increased PV self-utilization between 3% and 35%.
• The simulation environment was fully defined and significant modelling conducted to evaluate TABEDE's impacts when deployed at neighborhood scale. Results from our modelling showed that up to 33% of the district’s electricity consumption could be made flexible following TABEDE installation. With this flexibility exposed, TABEDE enabled increased PV self-utilization across a range of scenarios, topping out at 51%.
• TABEDE exploitation plans and business models were defined to drive adoption of the solution. In total, six Key Exploitable Results were identified, with exploitation plans developed for each. A broader market and regulatory analysis was conducted to understand the barriers and drivers to TABEDE adoption.
• Significant dissemination activities took place to raise awareness about TABEDE's efforts. In total, 8 conference papers and 4 journal papers were submitted, 7 workshops/events were held, and a stakeholder community of close to 400 individuals was organized.
Throughout the project, TABEDE focused on five key impacts. These are summarized below, along with related, project-end results.
1. TABEDE will enable the achievement of at least 30% energy savings in buildings that will be directly translated in end-user bill reduction and CO2 savings. RESULT: Flexibility and control strategies enabled by TABEDE drove energy cost savings of between 3-30% at the test site locations, and by up to a third in the simulation environment.
2. Increase by 25% the penetration of RES in the generation of electricity. RESULT: At the test site level, PV self-consumption was increased by up to 35%; in the simulation environment, we modelled a 30% increase in self-utilization.
3. Reduce/defer DSOs required investments in grid reinforcements and grid balancing by improving assets and network utilization. RESULT: Through the test sites and simulation environment TABEDE was shown to effectively modify load patterns to shift consumption in response to grid signals and the availability of locally produced PV, which can reduce periods of peak demand and decrease the load of key components of the local grid.
4. TABEDE solution will be ready to integrate the market at low cost within 5 years before the project. RESULT: The successful deployment of the TABEDE solution at the three test sites, demonstrates that the integrated system achieved TRL 7, as foreseen in the DoA, positioning it well for market integration within five years.
5. TABEDE will open the energy markets to new participants. RESULT: By introducing DR capabilities to more buildings, TABEDE opens up energy markets to new participants.
1. TABEDE will enable the achievement of at least 30% energy savings in buildings that will be directly translated in end-user bill reduction and CO2 savings. RESULT: Flexibility and control strategies enabled by TABEDE drove energy cost savings of between 3-30% at the test site locations, and by up to a third in the simulation environment.
2. Increase by 25% the penetration of RES in the generation of electricity. RESULT: At the test site level, PV self-consumption was increased by up to 35%; in the simulation environment, we modelled a 30% increase in self-utilization.
3. Reduce/defer DSOs required investments in grid reinforcements and grid balancing by improving assets and network utilization. RESULT: Through the test sites and simulation environment TABEDE was shown to effectively modify load patterns to shift consumption in response to grid signals and the availability of locally produced PV, which can reduce periods of peak demand and decrease the load of key components of the local grid.
4. TABEDE solution will be ready to integrate the market at low cost within 5 years before the project. RESULT: The successful deployment of the TABEDE solution at the three test sites, demonstrates that the integrated system achieved TRL 7, as foreseen in the DoA, positioning it well for market integration within five years.
5. TABEDE will open the energy markets to new participants. RESULT: By introducing DR capabilities to more buildings, TABEDE opens up energy markets to new participants.