Flexibility Potential in the Austrian Building Sector

Abstract

What would happen if 15% of the Austrian building stock in 2030 – both refurbished and newly-built – would use flexible heating/cooling systems to offer their flexibility on a market? How much annual residual loads from volatile renewable energy sources (RES) could be absorbed? Our simple agent-market model says: ~5% of RES surpluses and around 2% of RES residual loads. The cost of this operation is additional energy demand of about 30%, indicating an efficiency of approx. 70% in using these volatile supply peaks in flexible building operation. In this model, buildings are agents offering additional electricity consumption from pre-emptive HVAC operation, effectively using the building mass as storage, their energy demand is modelled in a simple thermal RC model. The grid flexibility demand is derived from future residual load scenarios and the offered flexibility depends both on signal parameters, mainly signal frequency and duration, and on key building parameters indoor temperature comfort bounds, building mass and thermal envelope quality.