Understanding and Supporting Flexible Use of Electricity in Commercial Buildings
We Wonder…
What are the planning and operational decisions involved in commercial building reactions to demand response events?
Project Background: Flexibility in the timing of electricity consumption is critical to ensure future grid reliability and resilience in the face of new stresses and widespread intermittent renewable energy supply. Buildings that participate in demand response (DR) programs can supply flexibility while earning revenues and lowering electricity costs. DR participation is currently limited in scope.
This project is based on the idea that a better tool could help with this. The decision science research team’s role is to inform the design and recommendations of that “better tool,” as part of a bigger project team. More information on the larger project is available here.
Decision Science Research Tasks: The main contribution of our research will be the stated preferences of various actors in commercial building demand response decision-making. We will elicit these preferences by implementing discrete choice experiments (DCEs). To inform the design of these experiments, we will conduct structured interviews.
Decision Science Research Questions:
- How do building operators make tradeoffs among end-use options to achieve demand reductions?
- To what extent do flexible load adjustment preferences among building operators vary based on observable factors (e.g., building type, climate, etc.)?
Decision Science Research Team: Margaret Taylor, Jingjing Zhang, Jeffrey Deason, Samuel Fernandes, Hung-Chia Yang, Sarah Price, Hassan Obeid.
Others on Project Team: Jared Langevin (PI), Tianzhen Hong, Na Luo, Handi Chandra Putra, Mary Ann Piette.
Funding Information: The project is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, in response to BTO FOA DE-LC-000L048.
To contact us with questions about this project: flex.bldgs.decisions@lbl.gov