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.
