Impact of Building Design Variables on Demand Response Capability Considering Local Grid Profiles

Abstract

The increasing share of volatile renewable energy sources like wind- and solar power poses challenges for balancing supply and demand in electrical power systems. Demand response is considered a promising strategy to address this issue, creating a need for evaluation metrics that assess grid participants’ ability to effectively apply demand response strategies. Many existing approaches rely on indicators focusing on energy costs, efficiency, or greenhouse gas emissions, while the impact on local grid stress remains insufficiently captured. To address this gap, this work introduces the Grid Stress Index (GSI), an evaluation metric that enables benchmarking of a building’s contribution to local grid stress by weighting its consumption and production behavior with the normalized load profile at a reference grid node, such as a transformer or substation. We demonstrate the method in a simplified simulation environment with a direct-optimization based building control strategy that implements load shifting by preheating. A use case illustrates how the metric can evaluate the impact of building design parameters (such as insulation thickness and thermal mass) to load shifting potential. Results show that the GSI captures the beneficial effects of increased insulation and thermal mass, while also revealing non-additive interactions between these parameters. Furthermore, the location awareness of the metric is demonstrated by evaluating the installation of photovoltaic systems in two distinct grid contexts, revealing how the same intervention can either mitigate or increase local grid stress.